THE title A Modern Panarion
has been taken from the controversial Panarion of the Church Father Epiphanius
in which he attacked
the various sects and heresies of the first four centuries
of the Christian era. The Panarion was so called as being a “basket” of scraps
and fragments. We are told that this Panarion was “a kind of medicine chest, in
which he had collected means of healing against the poisonous
bite of the
heretical serpent.”

A Modern Panarion is of a like
nature with the intent of the Christian Father; only in the nineteenth century,
heresy has in many instances become orthodoxy, and orthodoxy heresy, and the
Panarion of H. P. Blavatsky is intended as a means of healing against the errors
of ecclesiasticism, dogma and bigotry, and the blind negation of materialism and
pseudo-science.
EDITORS.

THE H. P. B. MEMORIAL FUND

In 1891 the following
resolutions were passed by all the Sections of the Theosophical Society :—

Resolved:

1. That the most fitting and
permanent memorial of H. P. B.’s life and work would be the production and
publication of such papers, books and translations as will tend to promote that
intimate union between the life and thought of the Orient and the Occident to
the bringing about of which her life was devoted.

2. That an “H. P. B. Memorial
Fund” be instituted for this purpose, to which all those who feel gratitude or
admiration towards H. P. B. for her work, both within and without the T. S., are
earnestly invited to contribute as their means may allow.

3. That the President of the
Theosophical Society, together with the General Secretaries of all Sections of
the same, constitute the Committee of Management of this Fund.

4. That the Presidents of
Lodges in each Section be a Committee to collect and forward to the General
Secretary of their respective Sections the necessary funds for this purpose.

THE EDDY MANIFESTATIONS—————

[ The following letter was
addressed to a contemporary journal by Mine. Blavatsky, and was handed to us for
publication in The Daily Graphic, as we have been taking the lead in the
discussion of the curious subject of Spiritualism.—EDIT0R “DAILY GRAPHIC.”]

AWARE in the past of your love
of justice and fair play, I most earnestly solicit the use of your columns to
reply to an article by Dr. G. M. Beard in relation to the Eddy family in
Vermont. He, in denouncing them and their spiritual manifestations in a most
sweeping declaration, would aim a blow at the entire spiritual world of to-day.
His letter appeared this morning (October 2 Dr. George M. Beard has for the last
few weeks assumed the part of the “roaring lion” seeking for a medium “to
devour.” It appears that to-day the learned gentleman is more hungry than ever.
No wonder, after the failure he has experienced with Mr. Brown, the
“mind-reader,” at New Haven.

I do not know Dr. Beard
personally, nor do I care to know how far he is entitled to wear the laurels of
his profession as an M.D., but what I do know is that he may never hope to
equal, much less to surpass, such men and savants as Crookes, Wallace, or even
Flammarion, the French astronomer, all of whom have devoted years to the
investigation of Spiritualism. All of them came to the conclusion that, supposing even the well-known phenomenon of the materialization of spirits did not
prove the identity of the persons whom they purported to represent, it was not,
at all events, the work of mortal hands; still less was it a fraud.

Now to the Eddys. Dozens of
visitors have remained there for weeks and even for months; not a single séance
has taken place with out some of them realizing the personal presence of a
friend, a relative, a mother, father, or dear departed child. But lo! here comes
Dr. Beard, stops less than two days, applies his powerful electrical battery,
under which the spirit does not even wink or flinch, closely examines the

2 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

cabinet (in which he finds
nothing), and then turns his back and declares most emphatically “that he wishes
it to be perfectly under-stood that if his scientific name ever appears in
connection with the Eddy family, it must be only to expose them as the greatest
frauds who cannot do even good trickery.” Consummatum est! Spiritualism is
defunct. Requiescat in Pace! Dr. Beard has killed it with one word. Scatter
ashes over your venerable but silly heads, 0 Crookes, Wallace and Varley!
Henceforth you must be considered as demented, psychologized lunatics, and so
must it be with the many thousands of Spiritualists who have seen and talked
with their friends and relatives departed, recognizing them at Moravia, at the
Eddys’, and elsewhere throughout the length and breadth of this continent. But
is there no escape from the horns of this dilemma? Yea verily, Dr. Beard writes
thus: “When your correspondent returns to New York I will teach him on any
convenient evening how to do all that the Eddys' do.” Pray why should a Daily
Graphic reporter be the only one selected by G. M. Beard, M.D. for initiation
into the knowledge of so clever a “trick”? In such a case why not publicly
denounce this universal trickery, and so benefit the whole world? But Dr. Beard
seems to be as partial in his selections as he is clever in detecting the said
tricks. Didn’t the learned doctor say to Colonel Olcott while at the Eddys’ that
three dollars’ worth of second-hand drapery would be enough for him to show how
to materialize all the spirits that visit the Eddy homestead?

To this I reply, backed as I
am by the testimony of hundreds of reliable witnesses, that all the wardrobe of
Niblo’s Theatre would not suffice to attire the numbers of “spirits” that emerge
night after night from an empty little closet.

Let Dr. Beard rise and explain
the following fact if he can: I remained fourteen days at the Eddys’. In that
short period of time I saw and recognized fully, out of 119 apparitions, seven
“spirits.” I admit that I was the only one to recognize them, the rest of the
audience not having been with me in my numerous travels throughout the East, but
their various dresses and costumes were plainly seen and closely examined by
all.

The first was a Georgian boy,
dressed in the historical Caucasian attire, the picture of whom will shortly
appear in The Daily Graphic. I recognized and questioned him in Georgian upon
circumstances known only to myself. I was understood and answered. Requested by
me in

3 ———————————————————THE EDDY
MANIFESTATIONS.

his mother tongue (upon the
whispered suggestion of Colonel Olcott) to play the Lezguinka, a Circassian
dance, he did so immediately upon the guitar.

Second—A little old man
appears. He is dressed as Persian merchants generally are. His dress is perfect
as a national costume. Everything is in its right place, down to the “babouches”
that are off his feet, he stepping out in his stockings. He speaks his name in a
loud whisper. It is “Hassan Aga,” an old man whom I and my family have known for
twenty years at Tiflis. He says, half in Georgian and half in Persian, that he
has got a “big secret to tell me,” and comes at three different times, vainly
seeking to finish his sentence.

Third—A man of gigantic
stature comes forth, dressed in the picturesque attire of the warriors of
Kurdistan. He does not speak, but bows in the oriental fashion, and lifts up his
spear ornamented with bright-coloured feathers, shaking it in token of welcome.
I recognize him immediately as Jaffar Ali Bek, a young chief of a tribe of
Kurds, who used to accompany me in my trips around Ararat in Armenia on
horseback, and who on one occasion saved my life. More, he bends to the ground
as though picking up a handful of mould, and scattering it around, presses his
hand to his bosom, a gesture familiar only to the tribes of the Kurdistan.

Fourth—A Circassian comes out.
I can imagine myself at Tiflis, so perfect is his costume of “nouker” (a man who
either runs before or behind one on horseback). This one speaks more, he
corrects his name, which I pronounced wrongly on recognizing him, and when I
repeat it he bows, smiling, and says in the purest guttural Tartar, which sounds
so familiar to my ear, “Tchoch yachtchi” (all right), and goes away.

Fifth—Au old woman appears
with Russian headgear. She comes out and addresses me in Russian, calling me by
an endearing term that she used in my childhood. I recognize an old servant of
my family, a nurse of my sister.

Sixth—A large powerful negro
next appears on the platform. His head is ornamented with a wonderful coiffure
something like horns wound about with white and gold. His looks are familiar to
me, but I do not at first recollect where I have seen him. Very soon he begins
to make some vivacious gestures, and his mimicry helps me to recognize him at a
glance. It is a conjurer from Central Africa. He grins and disappears.

4 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

Seventh and last—A large,
grey-haired gentleman comes out attired in the conventional suit of black. The
Russian decoration of St. Ann hangs suspended by a large red moiré ribbon with
two black stripes— a ribbon, as every Russian will know, belonging to the said
decoration. This ribbon is worn around his neck. I feel faint, for I think I
recognize my father. But the latter was a great deal taller. In my excitement
I address him in English, and ask him: “Are you my father?” He shakes his head
in the negative, and answers as plainly as any mortal man can speak, and in
Russian, “No; I am your uncle.” The word “diadia” was heard and remembered by
all the audience. It means “uncle.” But what of that? Dr. Beard knows it to be
but a pitiful trick, and we must submit in silence. People that know me know
that I am far from being credulous. Though an Occultist of many years’ standing,
I am more sceptical in receiving evidence from paid mediums than many
unbelievers. But when I receive such evidences as I received at the Eddys’, I
feel bound on my honour, and under the penalty of confessing myself a moral
coward, to defend the mediums, as well as the thousands of my brother and sister
Spiritualists against the conceit and slander of one man who has nothing and no
one to back him in his assertions. I now hereby finally and publicly challenge
Dr. Beard to the amount of $500 to produce before a public audience and under the
same conditions the manifestations herein attested, or failing this, to bear the
ignominious consequences of his proposed exposé

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

I2 East Sixteenth Street, New
York City,

October 27th, 1874

DR. BEARD CRITICIZED—————

As Dr. Beard has scorned (in
his scientific grandeur) to answer the challenge sent to him by your humble
servant in the number of The Daily Graphic for the 13th* of October last, and has
preferred instructing the public in general rather than one “credulous fool” in
particular, let her come from Circassia or Africa, I fully trust you will
permit me to use your paper once more in order that by pointing out some very
spicy peculiarities of this amazingly scientific exposure, the public might
better judge at whose door the aforesaid elegant epithet could be most
appropriately laid.

For a week or so an immense
excitement, a thrill of sacrilegious fear, if I may be allowed this expression,
ran through the psychologized frames of the Spiritualists of New York. It was
rumoured in ominous whispers that G. Beard, M.D., the Tyndall of America, was
coming out with his peremptory exposure of the Eddys’ ghosts and—the Spiritualists trembled for their gods!

The dreaded day has come, the
number of The Daily Graphic for November the 9th is before us. We have read it
carefully, with respectful awe, for true science has always been an authority
for us (weak- minded fool though we may be), and so we handled the dangerous
exposure with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a fanatic Christian opening a
volume of Büchner. We perused it to the last: we turned the page over and over
again, vainly straining our eyes and brains to detect therein one word of
scientific proof or a solitary atom of over whelming evidence that would thrust
into our Spiritualistic bosom the venomous fangs of doubt. But no, not a
particle of reasonable explanation or of scientific evidence that what we have
all seen, heard and felt at the Eddys’ was but delusion. In our feminine
modesty, still allowing the said article the benefit of the doubt, we
disbelieved our—————

* This appears to be a misprint,
unless the challenge had been made on the 13th, and was Only repeated in the
letter of Oct. 2 —Eds.

6 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

own senses, and so devoted a
whole day to the picking up of sundry bits of criticism from judges that we
believe more competent than ourselves, and at last came collectively to the
following conclusion:

The Daily Graphic has allowed
Dr. Beard in its magnanimity nine columns of its precious pages to prove—what?
Why, the following:

First, that
he, Dr. Beard,
according to his own modest assertions (see columns second and third) is more
entitled to occupy the position of an actor intrusted with characters of
simpletons (Molière’s “Tartuffe” might fit him perhaps as naturally) than to
undertake the difficult part of a Prof. Faraday vis-à-vis the Chittenden D. D. Home.

Secondly, that although the
learned doctor was “overwhelmed already with professional labours” (a nice and
cheap reclame, by the way) and scientific researches, he gave the latter another
direction, and so went to the Eddys. That, arrived there, he played with Horatio
Eddy, for the glory of science and the benefit of humanity, the difficult
character of a “dishevelled simpleton,” and was rewarded in his scientific research by finding on the said suspicious premises a professor of bumps “a poor
harmless fool”! Galileo, of famous memory, when he detected the sun in its
involuntary imposture chuckled certainly less over his triumph than does Dr.
Beard over the discovery of this “poor fool” No. 1. Here we modestly suggest
that perhaps the learned doctor had no need to go as far as Chittenden for that.

Further, the doctor,
forgetting entirely the wise motto, Non bis in idem, discovers and asserts
throughout the length of his article that all the past, present and future
generations of pilgrims to the “Eddy homestead” are collectively fools, and that
every solitary member of this numerous body of Spiritualistic pilgrims is
likewise “a weak- minded, credulous fool”! Query—the proof of it, if you please,
Dr. Beard? Answer—Dr. Beard has said so, and Echo responds, Fool!

Truly miraculous are thy
doings, indeed, 0 Mother Nature! The cow is black and its milk is white! But
then, you see, those ill-bred, ignorant Eddy brothers have allowed their
credulous guests to eat up all the “trout” caught by Dr. Beard and paid for by
him seventy-five cents per pound as a penalty; and that fact alone might have
turned him a little—how shall we say—sour, prejudiced? No, erroneous in his
statement, will answer better.

For erroneous he is, not to
say more. When, assuming an air of scientific authority, he affirms that the
séance-room is generally so dark

7 ————————————————————DR. BEARD CRITICIZED.

that one cannot recognize at
three feet distance his own mother, he says what is not true. When he tells us
further that he saw through a hole in one of the shawls and the space between
them all the manœuvres of Horatio’s arm, he risks finding himself contradicted
by thousands who, weak-minded though they may be, are not blind for all that,
neither are they confederates of the Eddys, but far more reliable wit nesses in
their simple-minded honesty than Dr. Beard is in his would-be scientific and
unscrupulous testimony. The same when he says that no one is allowed to approach
the spirits nearer than twelve feet dis tance, still less to touch them, except
the “two simple-minded ignorant idiots” who generally sit on both ends of the
platform. To my knowledge many other persons have sat there besides those two.

Dr. Beard ought to know this
better than anyone else, as he has sat there himself. A sad story is in
circulation, by the way, at the Eddys’. The records of the spiritual séances at
Chittenden have devoted a whole page to the account of a terrible danger that
threatened for a moment to deprive America of one of her brightest scientific
stars. Dr. Beard, admitting a portion of the story himself, perverts the rest of
it, as he does everything else in his article. The doctor admits that he had
been badly struck by the guitar, and, not being able to bear the pain, “jumped
up,” and broke the circle. Now it clearly appears that the learned gentleman has
neglected to add to the immense stock of his knowledge the first rudiments of
“logic.” He boasts of having completely blinded Horatio and others as to the
real object of his visit. What should then Horatio pummel his head for? The
spirits were never known before to be as rude as that. But Dr. B. does not
believe in their existence and so lays the whole thing at Horatio’s door. He
forgets to state, though, that a whole shower of missiles were thrown at his
head and that—”pale as a ghost,” so says the tale-telling record—the poor scientist surpassed
for a moment the “fleet-footed Achilles” himself in the celerity with which he
took to his heels. How strange if Horatio, not suspecting him still, left him
standing at two feet distance from the shawl! How very logical!

It becomes
evident that the said neglected logic was keeping company at the time with old mother Truth at
the bottom of her well, neither of them being wanted by Dr. Beard. I myself have
sat upon the upper step of the platform for fourteen nights by the side of Mrs.
Cleveland. I got up every time “Honto” approached me to within an inch of my
face in order to see her the better. I have touched her

8 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

hands repeatedly as other
spirits have been touched, and even embraced her nearly every night.

Therefore,
when I read Dr. Beard’s preposterous and cool assertion that “a very low order
of genius is required to obtain command of a few words in different languages
and so to mutter them to credulous Spiritualists,” I feel every right in the world to say
in my turn that such a scientific exposure as Dr. Beard has come out with in his
article does not require any genius at all; per contra, it requires a ridiculous
faith on the part of the writer in his own infallibility, as well as a positive
confidence in finding in all his readers what he elegantly terms “weak- minded
fools.” Every word of his statement, when it is not a most evident untruth, is a
wicked and malicious insinuation built on the very equivocal authority of one
witness against the evidence of thousands.

Says Dr Beard, “I have proved
that the life of the Eddys is one long lie, the details need no further
discussion.” The writer of the above lines forgets, by saying these imprudent
words, that some people might think that “like attracts like.” He went to
Chittenden with deceit in his heart and falsehood on his lips, and so judging
his neighbour by the character he assumed himself, he takes everyone for a
knave when he does not put him down as a fool. Declaring so positively that he
has proved it, the doctor forgets one trifling circumstance, namely, that he
has proved nothing whatever.

Where are
his boasted proofs? When we contradict him by saying that the séance-room is far from being as
dark as he pretends it to be, and that the spirits themselves have repeatedly
called out through Mrs. Eaton’s voice for more light, we only say what we can
prove before any jury. When Dr. Beard says that all the spirits are personated
by W. Eddy, he advances what would prove to be a greater conundrum for solution
than the apparition of spirits themselves. There he falls right away into the
domain of Cagliostro: for if Dr. B. has seen five or six spirits in all, other
persons, myself included, have seen one hundred and nineteen in less than a
fortnight, nearly all of whom were differently dressed. Besides, the accusation
of Dr. Beard implies the idea to the public that the artist of The Daily Graphic
who made the sketches of so many of those apparitions, and who is not a
“credulous Spiritualist” himself, is likewise a humbug, propagating to the world
what he did not see, and so spreading at large the most preposterous and
outrageous lie.

When the learned doctor will
have explained to us how any man in

9 ————————————————————DR. BEARD CRITICIZED.

his shirt-sleeves and a pair
of tight pants for an attire can possibly conceal on his person (the cabinet
having been previously found empty) a whole bundle of clothes, women’s robes,
hats, caps, head-gears, and entire stilts of evening dress, white waistcoats and
neckties included, then he will be entitled to more belief than he is at
present. That would be a proof indeed, for, with all due respect to his
scientific mind, Dr. Beard is not the first Œdipus that has thought of catching
the Sphinx by its tail and so unriddling the mystery. We have known more than
one “weak-minded fool,” ourselves included, that has lahoured under a similar
delusion for more than one night, but all of us were finally obliged to repeat
the words of the great Galileo, “E pur, se muove!” and give it up.

But Dr. Beard does not give it
up. Preferring to keep a scornful silence as to any reasonable explanation, he
hides the secret of the above mystery in the depths of his profoundly scientific
mind. “His life is given to scientific researches,” you see; “his physiological
knowledge and neuro-physiological learning are immense,” for he says so, and
skilled as he is in combating fraud by still greater fraud (see column the
eighth), spiritualistic humbug has no more mysteries for him. In five minutes
the scientist had done more towards science than all the rest of the scientists
put together have done in years of labour, and “would feel ashamed if he had
not.” (See same column.) In the overpowering modesty of his learning he takes no
credit to himself for having done so, though he has discovered the astounding,
novel fact of the “cold benumbing sensation.” How Wallace, Crookes and Varley,
the naturalist-anthropologist, the chemist and electrician, will blush with envy
in their old country! America alone is able to produce on her fertile soil such
quick and miraculous intellects. “Veni, Vidi, Vici!” was the motto of a great
conqueror. Why should not Dr. Beard select for his crest the same? And then, not
unlike the Alexanders and the Cæsars of antiquity (in the primitive simplicity of
his manners), he abuses people so elegantly, calling them “fools” when he cannot
find a better argument.

A far wiser mind than Dr.
Beard (will he dispute the fact?) has suggested, centuries ago, that the tree
was to be judged according to its fruits. Spiritualism, notwithstanding the
desperate efforts of more scientific men than himself, has stood its ground
without flinching for more than a quarter of a century. Where are the fruits of
the tree of science that blossoms on the soil of Dr. Beard’s mind? If we are to

10 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

judge of them by his article,
then verily the said tree needs more than usual care. As for the fruits, it
would appear that they are as yet in the realms of “sweet delusive hope.” But
then, perhaps the doctor was afraid to crush his readers under the weight’ of
his learning (true merit has been in all times modest and unassuming), and that
accounts for the learned doctor withholding from us any scientific proof of the
fraud that he pretends to be exposing, except the above-mentioned fact of the
“cold benumbing sensation.” But how Horatio can keep his hand and arm ice cold
under a warm shawl for half an hour at a time, in summer as well as in any other
season, and that without having some ice concealed about his person, or how he
can prevent it from thawing—all the above is a mystery
that Dr. Beard doesn’t reveal for the sent. Maybe he will tell us something of
it in his book that he advertises in the article. Well, we only hope that the
former will be more satisfactory than the latter.

I will add
but a few words
before ending my debate with Dr. Beard for ever. All that he says about the lamp
concealed in a bandbox, the strong confederates, etc., exists only in his
imagination, for the mere sake of argument, we suppose. “False in one, false in
all,” says Dr. Beard in column the sixth. These words are a just verdict on his
own article.

Here I will briefly state what
I reluctantly withheld up to the present moment from the knowledge of all such
as Dr. Beard. The fact was too sacred in my eyes to allow it to be trifled with
in newspaper gossiping. But now, in order to settle the question at once, I
deem it my duty as a Spiritualist to surrender it to the opinion of the public.

On the last night that I spent
with the Eddys I was presented by Georgo Dix and Mayflower with a silver
decoration, the upper part of a medal with which I was but too familiar. I quote
the precise words of the spirit: “We bring you this decoration, for we think you
will value it more highly than anything else. You will recognize it, for it is
the badge of honour that was presented to your father by his Government for the
campaign of 1828, between Russia and Turkey. We got it through the influence of
your uncle, who appeared to you here this evening. We brought it from your
father’s grave at Stavropol. You will identify it by a certain sign known to
yourself.”

These words were spoken in the
presence of forty witnesses. Col. Olcott will describe the fact and give the
design of the decoration.

I have the said decoration in
my possession. I know it as having

11 ————————————————————DR. BEARD CRITICIZED.

belonged to my father. More, I
have identified it by a portion that, through carelessness, I broke myself many
years ago, and, to settle all doubt in relation to it, I possess the photograph
of my father (a picture that has never been at the Eddys’, and could never
possibly have been seen by any of them) on which this medal is plainly visible.

Query for Dr. Beard: How could
the Eddys know that my father was buried at Stavropol; that he was ever
presented with such a medal, or that he had been present and in actual service
at the time of the war of 1828?

Willing as we are to give
every one his due, we feel compelled to say on behalf of Dr. Beard that he has
not boasted of more than he can do, in advising the Eddys' to take a few private
lessons of him in the trickery of mediumship. The learned doctor must be
expert in such trickeries. We are likewise ready to admit that in saying as he
did that “his article would only confirm the more the Spiritualists in their
belief” (and he ought to have added, “convince no one else”), Dr. Beard has
proved himself to be a greater “prophetic medium” than any other in this
country!

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

23, Irving Place, New York
City,

November
10th, 1874

THE LACK OF UNITY AMONG

SPIRITUALISTS—————

[ From a letter received from Mme.
Blavatsky last week we make the following extracts, want of space alone
preventing us from publishing it entire. It was written in her usual lively and
entertaining style, and her opinions expressed are worthy of careful study, many
of them being fully consistent with the true state of affairs.—EDIT0R “SPIRITUAL
SCIENTIST” (Dec. 3rd, 1874).]

As it is, I have only done my
duty; first, towards Spiritualism, that I have defended as well as I could from
the attacks of imposture under its too transparent mask of science; then towards
two helpless slandered “mediums”—the last word becoming fast in our days the
synonym of “martyr”; secondly, I have contributed my mite towards opening the
eyes of an indifferent public to the real, intrinsic value of such a man as Dr.
Beard. But I am obliged to confess that I really do not believe that I have done
any good—at least, any practical good—to Spiritualism itself; and I never hope
to perform such a feat as that were I to keep on for an eternity bombarding all
the newspapers of America with my challenges and refutations of the lies told by
the so-called “scientific exposers.”

It is with a profound sadness
in my heart that I acknowledge this fact, for I begin to think there is no help
for it. For over fifteen years have I fought my battle for the blessed truth; I
have travelled and preached it—though I never was born for a lecturer—from the
snow- covered tops of the Caucasian Mountains, as well as from the sandy valleys
of the Nile. I have proved the truth of it practically and by persuasion. For
the sake of Spiritualism I have left my home, an easy life amongst a civilized
society, and have become a wanderer upon the face of this earth. I had already
seen my hopes realized, beyond the most sanguine expectations, when, in my
restless desire for more knowledge, my unlucky star brought me to America.

Knowing this country to be the
cradle of modern Spiritualism, I

13 ———————————————THE LACK OF UNITY AMONG
SPIRITUALISTS.

came over here from France
with feelings not unlike those of a Mohammedan approaching the birthplace of his
prophet. I had for gotten that “no prophet is without honour save in his own
country.” In the less than fourteen months that I am here, sad experience has
but too well sustain the never-dying evidence of this immortal truth.

What little I have done
towards defending phenomena I am ever ready to do over and over again, as long
as I have a breath of life left in me. But what good will it ever do? We have a
popular and wise Russian saying that “one Cossack on the battle-field is no
warrior.” Such is my case, together with that of many other poor, struggling
wretches, everyone of whom, like a solitary scout, sent far ahead in advance of
the army, has to fight his own battle, and defend the post entrusted to him,
unaided by anyone but himself. There is no union between Spiritualists, no
entante cordiale, as the French say. Judge Edmonds said, some years ago,
that they numbered in their ranks over eleven millions in this country alone;
and I believe it to be true; in which case, it is but to be the more deplored.
When one man—as Dr. Beard did and will do yet—dares to defy such a formidable
body as that, there must be some cause for it. His insults, gross and vulgar as
they are, are too fearless to leave one particle of doubt that if he does it, it
is but because he knows too well that he can do so with impunity and perfect
ease. Year after year the American Spiritualists have allowed themselves to be
ridiculed and slighted by everyone who had a mind to do so, protesting so feebly
as to give their opponents the most erroneous idea of their weakness. Am I
wrong, then, in saying that our Spiritualists are more to be blamed than Dr.
Beard himself in all this ridiculous polemic? Moral cowardice breeds more
contempt than the “familiarity” of the old motto. How can we expect such a
scientific sleight-of-hand as he is to respect a body that does not respect
itself?

My humble opinion is, that the
majority of our Spiritualists are too much afraid for their “respectability”
when called upon to confess and acknowledge their “belief.” Will you agree with
me, if I say that the dread of the social Areopagus is so deeply rooted in the
hearts of your American people, that to endeavour to tear it out of them would
be undertaking to shake the whole system of society from top to bottom?
“Respectability” and “fashion” have brought more than one utter materialist to
select (for mere show) the Episcopalian and other wealthy churches. But
Spiritualism is not “fashionable,” as yet, and that’s

14
————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

where the trouble is.
Notwithstanding its immense and daily increasing numbers, it has not won, till
now, the right of citizenship. Its chief leaders are not clothed in gold and
purple and fine raiment; for, not unlike Christianity in the beginning of its
era, Spiritualism numbers in its ranks more of the humble and afflicted ones,
than of the powerful and wealthy of this earth. Spiritualists belonging to the
latter class will seldom dare to step out in the arena of publicity and boldly
proclaim their belief in the face of the whole world; that hybrid monster,
called “public opinion,” is too much for them; and what does a Dr. Beard care
for the opinion of the poor and the humble ones? He knows but too well that his
insulting terms of “fools” and “weak minded idiots,” as his accusations of
credulousness, will never be applied to themselves by any of the proud castes of
modern “Pharisees”; Spiritualists as they know themselves to be, and have
perhaps been for years, if they deign to notice the insult at all, it will be
but to answer him as the cowardly apostle did before them, “Man, I tell thee, I
know him not!”

St. Peter was the only one of
the remaining eleven that denied his Christ thrice before the Pharisees; that
is just the reason why, of all the apostles, he is the most revered by the
Catholics, and has been selected to rule over the most wealthy as the most
proud, greedy and hypocritical of all the churches in Christendom. And so, half
Christians and half believers in the new dispensation, the majority of those
eleven millions of Spiritualists stand with one foot on the threshold of
Spiritualism, pressing firmly with the other one the steps leading to the altars
of their “fashionable” places of worship, ever ready to leap over under the
protection of the latter in hours of danger. They know that under the cover of
such immense “respectability” they are perfectly safe. Who would presume or dare
to accuse of “credulous stupidity’’ a member belonging to certain ‘‘fashionable
congregations’’? Under the powerful and holy shade of any of those “pillars of
truth” every heinous crime is liable to become immediately transformed into but
a slight and petty deviation from strict Christian virtue. Jupiter, for all his
numberless “Don Juan” like frolics, was not the less on that account considered
by his worshippers as the “Father of Gods”!

THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY

A
FEW weeks ago, in a letter,
extracts from which have appeared in The Spiritual Scientist of December 3rd, I
alluded to the deplorable lack of accord between American Spiritualists, and the
consequences of the same. At that time I had just fought out my useless battle
with a foe who, though beneath my own personal notice, had insulted all the
Spiritualists of this country, as a body, in a caricature of a so-called
scientific exposé. In dealing with him I dealt with but one of the numerous
“bravos” enlisted in the army of the bitter opponents of belief; and my task
was, comparatively speaking, an easy one, if we take it for granted that
falsehood can hardly withstand truth, as the latter will ever speak for itself.
Since that day the scales have turned; prompted now, as then, by the same love
of justice and fair play, I feel compelled to throw down my glove once more in
our defence, seeing that so few of the adherents to the cause are bold enough to
accept that duty, and so many of them show the white feather of pusillanimity.

I indicated in my letter that
such a state of things, such a complete lack of harmony, and such cowardice, I
may add, among their ranks, subjected the Spiritualists and the cause to
constant attacks from a compact, aggressive public opinion, based upon ignorance
and wicked prejudice, intolerant, remorseless and thoroughly dishonest in the
employment of its methods. As a vast army, amply equipped, may be cut to pieces
by an inferior force well trained and handled, so Spiritualism, numbering its
hosts by millions, and able to vanquish every reactionary theology by a little
well-directed effort, is constantly harassed, weakened, impeded, by the
convergent attacks of pulpit and press, and by the treachery and cowardice of
its trusted leaders. It is one of these professed leaders that I propose to
question to-day, as closely as my rights, not only as a widely known Kabalist
but also as a resident of the United States, will allow me. When I see the
numbers of believers in this country, the broad basis of their belief, the im-

16 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

pregnability of their
position, and the talent that is embraced within their ranks, I am disgusted at
the spectacle that they manifest at this very moment, after the Katie King—how
shall we say—fraud? By no means, since the last word of this sensational comedy
is far from being spoken.

There is not a country on the
face of our planet, with a jury attached to its courts of justice, but gives the
benefit of the doubt to every criminal brought within the law, and affords him a
chance to be heard and tell his story.

Is such the case between the
pretended “spirit performer,” the alleged bogus Katie King, and the Holmes
mediums? I answer most decidedly no, and mean to prove it, if no one else does.

I deny the right of any man or
woman to wrench from our hands all possible means of finding out the truth. I
deny the right of any editor of a daily newspaper to accuse and publish
accusations, refusing at the same time to hear one word of justification from
the defendants, and so, instead of helping people to clear up the matter,
leaving them more than ever to grope their way in the dark.

The biography of “Katie King”
has come out at last; a sworn certificate, if you please, endorsed (under oath?)
by Dr. Child, who throughout the whole of this “burlesque” epilogue has ever
appeared in it, like some inevitable deus-ex-machinâ. The whole of this made-
up elegy (by whom? evidently not by Mrs. White) is redolent with the perfume of
erring innocence, of Magdalene-like tales of woe and sorrow, tardy repentance
and the like, giving us the abnormal idea of a pickpocket in the act of robbing
our soul of its most precious, thrilling sensations. The carefully-prepared
explanations on some points that appear now and then as so many stumbling-blocks
in the way of a seemingly fair exposé do not preclude, nevertheless, through
the whole of it, the possibility of doubt; for many awkward semblances of
truth, partly taken from the confessions of that fallen angel, Mrs. White, and
partly—most of them we should say—copied from the private note-book of her
“amanuensis,” give you a fair idea of the veracity of this sworn certificate.
For instance, according to her own statement and the evidence furnished by the
habitue’s of the Holmeses, Mrs. White having never been present at any of the
dark circles (her alleged acting as Katie King excluding all possibility, on her
part, of such a public exhibition of flesh and bones), how comes she to know so
well, in every particular, about the tricks of the mediums, the pro-

17 ———————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

gramme of their performances,
etc.? Then, again, Mrs. White who remembers so well—by rote we may say—every
word exchanged between Katie King and Mr. Owen, the spirit and Dr. Child, has
evidently forgotten all that was ever said by her in her bogus personation to
Dr. Felger; she does not even remember a very important secret communicated by
her to the latter gentleman! What an extraordinary combination of, memory and
absence of mind at the same time. May not a certain memorandum-book, with its
carefully-noted contents, account for it, perhaps? The document is signed, under
oath, with the name of a non-existing spirit, Katie King. . . . Very clever!

All protestations of innocence
or explanations sent in by Mr. or Mrs. Holmes, written or verbal, are
peremptorily refused publication by the press. No respectable paper dares takes
upon itself the responsibility of such an unpopular cause.

The public feel triumphant;
the clergy, forgetting in the excitement of their victory the Brooklyn scandal,
rub their hands and chuckle; a certain exposer of materialized spirits and
mind-reading, like some monstrous anti-spiritual mitrailleuse shoots forth a
volley of missiles, and sends a condoling letter to Mr. Owen; Spiritualists,
crestfallen, ridiculed and defeated, feel crushed for ever under the pretended
exposure and that overwhelming, pseudonymous evidence. . . . The day of
Waterloo has come for us, and sweeping away the last remnants of the defeated
army, it remains for us to ring our own death-knell.

Spirits, beware! henceforth,
if you lack prudence, your materialized forms will have to stop at the cabinet
doors, and in a perfect tremble melt away from sight, singing in chorus Edgar
Poe’s “Never more.” One would really suppose that the whole belief of the Spiritualists hung at the girdles of the Holmeses, and that in case they should be
unmasked as tricksters, we might as well vote our phenomena an old woman’s
delusion.

Is the scraping off of a
barnacle the destruction of a ship? But, moreover, we are not sufficiently
furnished with any plausible proofs at all.

Colonel Olcott is here and has
begun investigations. His first tests with Mrs. Holmes alone, for Mr. Holmes is
lying sick at Vineland, have proved satisfactory enough, in his eyes, to induce
Mr. Owen to return to the spot of his first love, namely, the Holmeses’ cabinet.
He began by tying Mrs. Holmes up in a bag, the string drawn tightly round her
neck, knotted and sealed in the presence of Mr. Owen, Col.

18 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Olcott and a third gentleman.
After that the medium was placed in the empty cabinet, which was rolled away
into the middle of the room, and it was made a perfect impossibility for her to
use her hands. The door being closed, hands appeared in the aperture, then the
outlines of a face came, which gradually formed into the classical head of John
King, turban, beard and all. He kindly allowed the investigators to stroke his
beard, touch his warm face, and patted their hands with his. After the séance
was over, Mrs. Holmes, with many tears of gratitude in the presence of the three
gentlemen, assured Mr. Owen most solemnly that she had spoken many a time to Dr.
Child about “Katie” leaving her presents in the house and dropping them about
the place, and that she—Mrs. Holmes—wanted Mr. Owen to know it; but that the
doctor had given her most peremptory orders to the contrary, forbidding her to
let the former know it, his precise words being, “Don’t do it, it’s useless; he
must not know it I leave the question of Mrs. Holmes’ veracity as to this fact for
Dr. Child to settle with her.

On the other hand, we have
tile woman, Eliza White, exposer and accuser of the Holmeses, who remains up to
the present day a riddle and an Egyptian mystery to every man and woman of this
city, except to the clever and equally invisible party—a sort of protecting
deity— who took the team in hand, and drove the whole concern of “Katie’s”
materialization to destruction, in what he considered such a first-rate way.
She is not to be met, or seen, or interviewed, or even spoken to by anyone,
least of all by the ex-admirers of “Katie King” herself, so anxious to get a
peep at the modest, blushing beauty who deemed her self worthy of personating
the fair spirit. Maybe it’s rather dangerous to allow them the chance of
comparing for themselves the features of both? But the most perplexing fact of
this most perplexing imbroglio is that Mr. R. D. Owen, by his Own confession to
me, has never, not even on the day of the exposure, seen Mrs. White, or
talked to her, or had other wise the least chance to scan her features close
enough for him to identify her. He caught a glimpse of her general outline but once,
viz., at the mock séance of Dec. 5th referred to in her biography, when she
appeared to half a dozen of witnesses (invited to testify and identify the
fraud) emerging de nova from the cabinet, with her face closely covered with a
double veil (!) after which the sweet vision vanished and appeared no more. Mr.
Owen adds that he is not prepared to swear to the identity of Mrs. White and
Katie King.

May I he allowed to enquire as
to the necessity of such a profound

19
———————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

mystery, after the promise of
a public exposure of all the fraud? It seems to me that the said exposure would
have been far more satisfactory if conducted otherwise. Why not give the
fairest chance to R. D. Owen, the party who has
suffered the most on account of this disgusting swindle—if swindle there is—to
compare Mrs. White with his Katie? May I suggest again that it is perhaps
because the spirit’s features are but too well impressed on his memory, poor,
noble, confiding gentleman. Gauze dresses and moonshine, coronets and stars can
possibly be counterfeited in a half-darkened room, while features, answering
line for line to the “spirit Katie’s” face, are not so easily made up; the
latter require very clever preparations. A lie may be easy enough for a smooth
tongue, but no pug nose can lie itself into a classical one.

A very honourable gentleman of
my acquaintance, a fervent admirer of the “spirit Katie’s” beauty, who has seen
and addressed her at two feet distance about fifty times, tells me that on a
certain evening, when Dr. Child begged the spirit to let him see her tongue (did
the honour-able doctor want to compare it with Mrs. White’s tongue—the lady
having been his patient?), she did so, and upon her opening her mouth, the
gentleman in question assures me that he plainly saw, what in his admiring
phraseology he terms “the most beautiful set of teeth—two rows of pearls.” He
remarked most particularly those teeth. Now there are some wicked, slandering
gossips, who happen to have cultivated most intimately Mrs. White’s
acquaintance in the happy days of her innocence, before her fall and subsequent
exposé and they tell us very bluntly (we beg the penitent angel’s pardon, we
repeat but a hear say) that this lady can hardly number among her other natural
charms the rare beauty of pearly teeth, or a perfect, most beautiful formed hand and
arm. Why not show her teeth at once to the said admirer, and so shame the
slanderers? Why shun “Katie’s” best friends? If we were so anxious as she seems
to be to prove “who is who,” we would surely submit with pleasure to the
operation of showing our teeth, yea, even in a court of justice. The above fact,
trifling as it may seem at first sight, would be considered as a very important
one by any intelligent juryman in a question of personal identification.

Mr. Owen's statement to us,
corroborated by “Katie King” herself in her biography, a sworn document,
remember, is in the following words:

“She consented to have an
interview with some gentlemen who had seen her personating the spirit, on
condition that she would be allowed to

20 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

keep a veil over her face all
the time she was conversing with them.” (Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 11th, 4
col., “K. K. Biography.”)

Now pray why should these “too
credulous weak-minded gentle men,” as the immortal Dr. Beard would say, he
subjected again to such an extra strain on their blind faith? We should say that
that was just the proper time to come out and prove to them what was the nature
of the mental aberration they were labouring under for so many months. Well, if
they do swallow this new veiled proof they are welcome to it.

Vulgus vult decipi decipiatur!
But I expect something more substantial before submitting in guilty silence to
be laughed at. As it is, the case stands thus:

According to the same
biography (same column) the mock séance was prepared and carried out to
everyone’s heart’s content, through the endeavours of an amateur detective, who,
by the way, if any one wants to know, is a Mr. W. 0. Leslie. a contractor or
agent for the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York Railroad, residing in this
city. If the press and several of the most celebrated victims of the fraud are
under bond of secrecy with him, I am. not, and mean to say what I know. And so
the said séance took place on Dec. 5th last, which fact appearing in sworn
evidence, implies that Mr. Leslie had wrested from Mrs. White the confession of
her guilt at least several days previous to that date, though the precise day
of the ‘‘amateur’s’’ triumph is very cleverly withheld in the sworn certificate.
Now comes a new conundrum.

On the evenings of Dec. 2nd
and 3rd at two séances held at the Holmeses’, I, myself, in the presence of
Robert Dale Owen and Dr. Child (chief manager of those performances, from whom I
got on the same morning an admission card), together with twenty more witnesses,
saw the spirit of Katie step out of the cabinet twice, in full form and beauty,
and I can swear in any court of justice that she did not bear the least
resemblance to Mrs. White’s portrait.

As I am unwilling to base my
argument upon any other testimony than my own, I will not dwell upon the alleged
apparition of Katie King at the Holmeses’ on Dec. 5th to Mr. Roberts and fifteen
others, among whom was Mr. W. H. Clarke, a reporter for The Daily Graphic, for I
happened to be out of town, though, if this fact is demonstrated, it will go far
against Mrs. White, for on that precise evening, and at the same hour, she was
exhibiting herself as the bogus Katie at the mock séance. Something still more
worthy of consideration is found in the

21———————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

most positive assertion of a
gentleman, a Mr. Wescott, who on that evening of the 5th on his way home from the
real séance, met in the car Mr. Owen, Dr. Child and his wife, all three
returning from the mock séance. Now it so happened that this gentleman
mentioned to them about having just seen the spirit Katie come out of the
cabinet, adding ‘‘he thought she never looked better” ; upon hearing which Mr.
Robert Dale Owen stared at him in amazement, and all the three looked greatly
perplexed.

And so I
have but insisted on the apparition of the spirit at the mediums’ house on the
evenings Dec. 2nd and
3rd, when I witnessed the phenomenon, together with Robert Dale Owen and other
parties.

It would be worse than useless
to offer or accept the poor excuse that the confession of the woman White, her
exposure of the fraud, the delivery to Mr. Leslie of all her dresses and
presents received by her in the name of Katie King, the disclosure of the sad
news by this devoted gentleman to Mr. Owen, and the preparation of the mock séance
cabinet and other important matters, had all of them taken place on the 4th the
more so, as we are furnished with most positive proofs that Dr. Child at least,
if not Mr. Owen. knew all about Mr. Leslie’s success with Mrs. White several
days beforehand. Knowing then of the fraud, how could Mr. Leslie allow it to be
still carried on, as the fact of Katie’s apparition at the Holmeses’ on Dec. 2nd
and 3rd prove to have been the case? Any gentleman, even with a very moderate
degree of honour about him, would never allow the public to be fooled and
defrauded any longer, unless he had time firm resolution of catching the bogus
spirit on the spot and proving the imposition. But no such thing occurred. Quite
the contrary; for Dr. Child, who had constituted himself from the first not only
chief superintendent of the séances, cabinet and materialization business, but
also cashier and ticket-holder (paying the mediums at first ten dollars per séance, as he
did, and subsequently fifteen dollars, and pocketing the rest of the proceeds),
on that same evening of the 3rd took the admission money from
every visitor as quietly as he ever did. I will add, furthermore, that I, in propriâ personâ, handed him on that very night a five—dollar bill, and that he
(Dr. Child) kept the whole of it, remarking that the balance could he made good
to us by future séance.

Will Dr. Child presume to say
that getting ready, as he then was, in company with Mr. Leslie, to produce the
bogus Katie King on the 5th of December, he knew nothing, as yet, of the fraud on
the 3rd?

22 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Further; in the same biography
(chap. viii, column the 1st), it is stated that, immediately upon Mrs. White’s
return from Blissfield, Mich., she called on Dr. Child, and offered to expose
the whole humbug she had been engaged in, but that he would not listen to her.
Upon that occasion she was not veiled, as indeed there was no necessity for her
to be, since by Dr. Child’s own admission she had been a patient of his, and
under his medical treatment. In a letter from Holmes to Dr. Child, dated
Blissfield, Aug. 28th, 1874, the former writes:

Mrs. White says you and the
friends were very rude, wanted to look into all our boxes and trunks and break
open locks. What were you looking for, or expecting to find?

All these several
circumstances show in the clearest possible manner that Dr. Child and Mrs. White
were on terms much more intimate then than that of casual acquaintance, and it
is the height of absurdity to assert that if Mrs. White and Katie King were
identical, the fraud was not perfectly well known to the “Father Confessor” (see
narrative of John and Katie King, p. 45). But a side light is thrown upon this
comedy from the pretended biography of John King and his daughter Katie, written
at their dictation in his own office by Dr. Child himself. This book was given
out to the world as an authentic revelation from these two spirits. It tells us
that they stepped in and stepped out of his office, day after day, as any mortal
being might, and after holding brief conversations, followed by long narratives,
they fully endorsed the genuineness of their own apparition in the Holmeses’
cabinet. Moreover, the spirits appearing at the public séances corroborated the
statements which they made to their amanuensis in his office; the two
dovetailing together and making a consistent story. Now, if the Holmeses’ Kings
were Mrs. White, who were the spirits visiting the doctor’s office? and if the
spirits visiting him were genuine, who were those that appeared at the public
séances? In which particular has the “Father Confessor” defrauded the public? In
selling a book containing false biographies or exposing bogus spirits at the Holmeses’? Which or both? Let the doctor choose.

If his conscience is so tender
as to force him into print with his certificate and affidavits why does it not
sink deep enough to reach his pocket, and compel him to refund to us the money
obtained by him under false pretences? According to his own confession, the
Holmeses received from him, up to the time they left town, about $1,2OO, for four
months of daily séances. That he admitted every night as many visitors

23 ———————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

as he could possibly find room
for—sometimes as many as thirty-five— is a fact that will be corroborated by
every person who has seen the phenomena more than once. Furthermore, some six or
seven reliable witnesses have told us that the modest fee of $1 was only for the habitués, too curious or over-anxious visitors having to pay sometimes as much
as $5, and in one instance $10. This last fact I give under all reserve, not
having had to pay so much as that myself.

Now let an impartial
investigator of this Philadelphia imbroglio take a pencil and cast up the profit
left after paying the mediums, in this nightly spirit speculation lasting many
months. The result would be to show that the business of a spirit “Father
Confessor” is, on the whole, a very lucrative one.

Ladies and gentlemen of the
spiritual belief, methinks we are all of us between the horns of a very
wonderful dilemma. If you happen to find your position comfortable, I do not,
and so will try to extricate myself.

Let it be perfectly
understood, though, that I do not intend in the least to undertake at present
the defence of the Holmeses. They may be the greatest frauds for what I know or
care. My only purpose is to know for a certainty to whom I am indebted for my
share of ridicule— small as it may be, luckily for me. If we Spiritualists are
to be laughed and scoffed at and ridiculed and sneered at, we ought to know at
least the reason why. Either there was a fraud or there was none. If the fraud
is a sad reality, and Dr. Child by some mysterious combination of his personal
cruel fate has fallen the first victim to it, after having proved himself so
anxious for the sake of his honour and character to stop at once the further
progress of such a deceit on a public that had hitherto looked on him alone as
the party responsible for the perfect integrity and genuineness of a phenomenon
so fully endorsed by him in all particulars, why does not the doctor come out
the first and help us to the clue of all this mystery? Well aware of the fact
that the swindled and defrauded parties can at any day assert their rights to
the restitution of moneys laid out by them solely on the ground of their entire
faith in him they had trusted, why does he not sue the Holmeses and so prove his
own innocence? He cannot but admit that in the eyes of some initiated parties,
his cause looks far more ugly as it now stands than the accusation under which
the Holmeses vainly struggle. Or, if there was no fraud, or if it is not fully
proved, as it cannot well be on the shallow testimony of a nameless woman
signing documents

24 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

with pseudonyms, why then all
this comedy on the part of the principal partner in the “Katie materialization”
business? Was not Dr. Child the institutor, the promulgator, and we may say the
creator of what proves to have been but a bogus phenomenon, after all? Was not
lie the advertising agent of this incarnated humbug—the Barnum of this spiritual
show? And now that he has helped to fool not only Spiritualists but the world at
large, whether as a confederate himself or one of the weak-minded fools—no
matter, so long as it is demonstrated that it was he that helped us to this
scrape—he imagines that by helping to accuse the mediums, and expose the fraud,
by fortifying with his endorsement all manner of bogus affidavits and illegal
certificates from non-existing parties, he hopes to find himself henceforth
perfectly clear of responsibility to the persons he has dragged after him into
this infamous swamp!

We must demand a legal
investigation. We have the right to insist upon it, for we Spiritualists have
bought this right at a dear price:
with the life-long reputation
of Mr. Owen as an able and reliable writer and trustworthy witness of the
phenomena, who may henceforth be regarded as a doubted and ever-ridiculed
visionary by sceptical wise-acres. We have bought this right with the prospect
that all of us, whom Dr. Child has unwittingly or otherwise (time will prove it)
fooled into belief in his Katie King, will become for a time the butts for end-less raillery, satires and jokes from the press and ignorant masses. We regret
to feel obliged to contradict on this point such an authority in all matters as
The Daily Graphic, but if orthodox laymen rather decline to see this fraud
thoroughly investigated in a court of justice for fear of the Holmeses becoming
entitled to the crown of martyrs, we have no such fear as that, and repeat with
Mr. Hudson Tuttle that “better perish the cause with the impostors than live
such a life of eternal ostracism, with no chance for justice or redress.”

Why in the name of all that
is wonderful should Dr. Child have all the laurels of this unfought battle, in
which the attacked army seems for ever doomed to be defeated without so much as
a struggle? Why should he have all the material benefit of this materialized
humbug, and R. D. Owen, an honest Spiritualist, whose name is universally
respected, have all the kicks and thumps of the sceptical press? Is this fair
and just? How long shall we Spiritualists be turned over like so many scapegoats
to the unbelievers by cheating mediums and speculating prophets? Like some
modern shepherd Paris, Mr. Owen fell a

25———————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

victim to the snares of this
pernicious, newly materialized Helen; and on him falls heaviest the present
reaction that threatens to produce a new Trojan war. But the Homer of the
Philadelphia Iliad, the one who has appeared in the past as the elegiac poet and
biographer of that same Helen, and who appears in the present kindling up the
spark of doubt against the Holmeses, till, if not speedily quenched, it might
become a roaring ocean of flames—he that plays at this present hour the
unparalleled part of a chief justice presiding at his own trial and deciding in
his own case-—Dr. Child, we say, turning back on the spirit daughter of his own
creation, and backing the mortal, illegitimate off spring furnished by somebody,
is left unmolested! Only fancy, while R. D. Owen is fairly crushed under the
ridicule of the exposure, Dr. Child, who has endorsed false spirits, now turns
state’s evidence and endorses as fervently spirit certificates, swearing to the
same in a court of justice

If ever I may hope to get a
chance of having my advice accepted by some one anxious to clear up all this
sickening story, I would insist that the whole matter be forced into a real
court of justice and unriddled before a jury. If Dr. Child is, after all, an
honest man whose trusting nature was imposed upon, lie must be the first to
offer us all the chances that he in his power of getting at the bottom of all
these endless “whys” and “bows.” If he does not, in such a case we will try for
ourselves to solve the following mysteries:

1st, Judge Allen, of Vineland,
now in Philadelphia, testifies to the fact that when the cabinet, made up under
the direct supervision and instructions of Dr. Child, was brought home to the
Holmeses, the doctor worked at it himself, unaided, one whole day, and with his
tools, Judge Allen being at the time at the mediums’, whom he was visiting. If
there was a trap-door or “two cut boards” connected with it, who did the work?
Who can doubt that such clever machinery, fitted in such a way as to baffle
frequent and close examinations on the part of the sceptics, requires an
experienced mechanic of more than ordinary ability? Further, unless well paid,
he could hardly be bound to secrecy. Who paid him? Is it Holmes out of his
ten-dollar nightly fee? We ought to ascertain it.

2nd, If it is true, as two
persons are ready to swear, that the party, calling herself Eliza White, alias
“Frank,” alias Katie King, and so forth, is no widow at all, having a well
materialized husband, who is living, and who keeps a drinking saloon in a
Connecticut town—then

26————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

in such case the fair widow
has perjured herself and Dr. Child has endorsed the perjury. We regret that he
should endorse the statements of the former as rashly as he accepted the fact
of her materialization.

3rd, Affidavits and witnesses
(five in all) are ready to prove that on a certain night, when Mrs. White was
visibly in her living body, refreshing her penitent stomach in company with
impenitent associates in a lager beer saloon, having no claims to patrician
“patronage,” Katie King, in her spirit form, was as visibly seen at the door of
her cabinet.

4th On one occasion, when Dr.
Child (in consequence of some prophetic vision, maybe) invited Mrs. White to
his own house, where he locked her up with the inmates, who entertained her the
whole of the evening, for the sole purpose of convincing (he always seems
anxious to convince somebody of something) some doubting sceptics of the reality
of the spirit-form, the latter appeared in the séance-room and talked with R. D.
Owen in the presence of all the company. The Spiritualists were jubilant that
night, and the doctor the most triumphant of them all. Many are the witnesses
ready to testify to the fact, but Dr. Child, when questioned, seems to have
entirely forgotten this important occurrence.

5th Who is the party whom she
claims to have engaged to personate General Rawlings? Let him come out and swear
to it, so that we will all see his great resemblance to the defunct warrior.

6th, Let her name the friends
from whom she borrowed the costumes to personate “Sauntee” and “Richard.” They
must prove it under oath. Let them produce the dresses. Can she tell us where
she got the shining robes of the second and third spheres?

7th Only some portions of
Holmes’ letters to “Frank” are published in the biography: some of them for the
purpose of proving their co- partnership in the fraud at Blissfield. Can she name
the house and parties with whom she lodged and boarded at Blissfield, Michigan?

When all the above questions
are answered and demonstrated to our satisfaction, then, and only then, shall we
believe that the Holmeses are the only guilty parties to a fraud, which, for its
consummate rascality and brazenness, is unprecedented in the annals of
Spiritualism.

I have read some of Mr.
Holmes’ letters, whether original or forged, no matter, and blessed as I am with
a good memory, I well remember certain sentences that have been, very luckily
for the poetic creature,

27 ——————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

suppressed by the blushing
editor as being too vile for publication. One of the most modest of the
paragraphs runs thus:

Remember, the above is
addressed to the woman who pretends to have personated the spirit of whom R. D.
Owen wrote thus:

I particularly noticed this
evening the ease and harmony of her motions. In Naples, (luring five years, I
frequented a circle famed for courtly demeanour; but never in the best-bred lady
of rank accosting her visitors, have I seen Katie out-rivalled.

And further:

A well-known artist of
Philadelphia, after examining Katie, said to me that he had seldom seen
features exhibiting more classic beauty. “Her movements and, bearing,” he added,
“are the very ideal of grace.”

Compare for one moment this
admiring description with the quotation from Holmes’ letter. Fancy an ideal of
classic beauty and grace crooking her elbow in a lager beer saloon, and—judge
for yourselves !

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

1111, Girard Street,
Philadelphia.

THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY

(Continued.)

IN the last Religio-Philosophical
Journal (for February 2 in the Philadelphia department, edited by Dr. Child,
under the most poetical heading of “After the Storm comes the Sunshine,” we
read the following:

I have been waiting patiently
for the excitement in reference to the Holmes fraud to subside a little. I will
now make some further statements and answer some questions.

Further:

The stories of my acquaintance with Mrs. White are all fabrications.

Further still:

I shall not notice the various
reports put forth about my pecuniary relations farther than to say there is a
balance due to me for money loaned to the Holmeses.

I claim the right to answer
the above three quotations, the more so that the second one consigns me most
unceremoniously to the ranks of the liars. Now if there is, in my humble
judgment, anything more contemptible than a cheat, it is certainly a liar.

The rest of this letter,
editorial, or whatever it may be, is unanswerable, for reasons that will be
easily understood by whoever reads it. ‘When petulant Mr. Pancks (in Littie Dorrit) spanked the benevolent Christopher Casby, this venerable patriarch only
mildly lifted up his blue eyes heavenward, and smiled more benignly than ever.
Dr. Child, tossed about and as badly spanked by public opinion, smiles as
sweetly as Mr. Casby, talks of “sunshine,” and quiets his urgent accusers by
assuring them that ‘‘it is all fabrications.”

I don’t know whence Dr. Child
takes his “sunshine,” unless he draws it from the very bottom of his innocent
heart.

For my part, since I came to
Philadelphia, I have seen little but slush and dirt; slush in the streets, and
dirt in this exasperating Katie King mystery.

29——————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

I would strongly advise Dr.
Child not to accuse me of “fabrication,” whatever else he may be inclined to
ornament me with. What I say I can prove, and am ever willing to do so at any
day. If he is innocent of all participation in this criminal fraud, let him
“rise and explain.”

If he succeeds in clearing his
record, I will be the first to rejoice, and promise to offer him publicly my
most sincere apology for the “erroneous suspicions” I labour under respecting
his part in the affair; but he must first prove that he is thoroughly innocent.
Hard words prove nothing, and he cannot hope to achieve such a victory by simply
accusing people of “fabrications.” If he does not abstain from applying
epithets unsupported by substantial proofs, he risks, as in the game of
shuttlecock and battledore, the chance of receiving the missile back, and maybe
that it will hurt him worse than he expects.

In the article in question he
says:

The stories of my acquaintance
with Mrs. White are all fabrications. I did let her in two or three times, but
the entry and hall were so dark that it was impossible to recognize her or any
one. I have seen her several times, and knew that she looked more like Katie
King than Mr. [?] or Mrs. Holmes.

Mirabile dietu! This beats our
learned friend, Dr. Beard. The latter denies, point-blank, not only
“materialization,” which is not yet actually proved to the world, but also every
spiritual phenomenon. But Dr. Child denies being acquainted with a woman whom he
confesses him self to have seen “several times,” received in his office, where
she was seen repeatedly by others, and yet at the same time admits that he “knew
she looked like Katie King,” etc. By the way, we have all laboured under the
impression that Dr. Child admitted in The Inquirer that he saw Mrs. White for
the first time and recognized her as Katie King only on that morning when she
made her affidavit at the office of the justice of the peace. A “fabrication”
most likely. In the R.-P. Journal for October 2 1874, Dr. Child wrote thus:

Your report does not for a
moment shake my confidence in our Katie King, as she comes to me every day and
talks to me. On several occasions Katie had come to me and requested Mr. Owen
and myself to go there [ to the Holmeses’] and she would come and repeat what
she had told me above.

Did Dr. Child ascertain where
Mrs. White was at the time of the spirit’s visits to him?

As to Mrs. White, I know her
well. I have on many occasions let her into the house. I saw her at the time the
manifestations were going on in Blissfield. She has since gone to Massachusetts.

30 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

And still the doctor assures
us he was not acquainted with Mrs. White. What signification does he give to the
word “acquaintance” in such a case? Did he not go, in the absence of the
Holmeses, to their house, and talk with her and even quarrel with the woman?
Another fabricated story, no doubt. I defy Dr. Child to print again, if he dare,
such a word as fabrication in relation to myself, after he has read a certain
statement that I reserve for the last.

In all this pitiful,
humbugging romance of an “exposure” by a too material she-spirit, there has not
been given us a single reasonable explanation of even so much as one solitary
fact. It began with a bogus biography, and threatens to end in a bogus fight,
since every single duel requires at least two participants, and Dr. Child
prefers extracting sunshine from the cucumbers of his soul and letting the storm
subside, to fighting like a man for his own fair name. He says that “he shall
not notice” what people say about his little speculative transactions with the
Holmeses. He assures us that they owe him money. Very likely, but it does not
alter the alleged fact of his having paid $10 for every séance and pocketing the
balance. Dare he say that he did not do it? The Holmeses' say otherwise, and
the statements in writing of various witnesses corroborate them.

The Holmeses may be scamps in
the eyes of certain persons, and the only ones in the eyes of the more
prejudiced; but as long as their statements have not been proven false, their
word is as good as the word of Dr. Child; aye, in a court of justice even, the
“Mediums Holmes” would stand just on the same level as any spiritual prophet or
clairvoyant who might have been visited by the same identical spirits that
visited the former. So long as Dr. Child does not legally prove them to be
cheats and himself innocent, why should not they be as well entitled to belief
as himself?

From the first hour of the
Katie King mystery, if people have accused them, no one so far as I know—not
even Dr. Child himself—has proved, or even undertaken to prove, the innocence of
their ex-cashier and recorder. The fact that every word of the ex-leader and
president of the Philadelphian Spiritualists would be published by every
spiritual paper (and here we must confess to our wonder that he does not hasten
much to avail himself of this opportunity) while any statement coming from the
Holmeses' would be pretty sure of rejection, would not necessarily imply the
fact that they alone are guilty; it would only go towards showing that,
notwithstanding the divine truth of our faith and the

31——————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

teachings of our invisible
guardians, some Spiritualists have not profited by them to learn impartiality
and justice.

These “mediums” are
persecuted; so far it is but justice, since they themselves admitted their guilt
about the photography fraud, and unless it can be shown that they were
thereunto controlled by lying spirits their own mouths condemn them; but what is less
just, is that they are slandered and abused on all points and made to bear alone
all the weight of a crime, where confederacy peeps out from every page of the
story. No one seems willing to befriend them—these two helpless uninfluential
creatures, who, if they sinned at all, perhaps sinned through weakness and
ignorance—to take their case in hand, and by doing justice to them, do justice
at the same time to the cause of truth. If their guilt should be as evident as
the daylight at noon, is it not ridiculous that their partner, Dr. Child,
should show surprise at being so much as suspected! History records but one
person—the legitimate spouse of the great Cæsar—whose name has to remain
enforced by law as above suspicion. Methinks that if Dr. Child possesses some
natural claims to his self-assumed title of Katie King’s “Father Confessor,” he
can have none whatever to share the infallibility of Madame Cæsar's virtue. Being
pretty sure as to this myself, and feeling, moreover, somewhat anxious to swell
the list of pertinent questions, which are called by our disingenuous friend
“fabrications,” with at least one fact, I will now proceed to furnish your
readers with the following:

“Katie’s” picture has been,
let us say, proved a fraud, an imposition on the credulous world, and is Mrs.
White’s portrait. This counterfeit has been proved by the beauty of the
“crooking elbow,” in her bogus autobiography (the proof sheets of which Dr.
Child was seen correcting), by the written confession of the Holmeses', and,
lastly, by Dr. Child himself.

Out of the several bogus
portraits of the supposed spirit, the most spurious one has been declared—mostly
on the testimony endorsed by Dr. Child and “over his signature”—to be the one
where the pernicious and false Katie King is standing behind the medium.

The operation of this delicate
piece of imposture proved so difficult as to oblige the Holmeses' to take into
the secret of the conspiracy the photographer.

Now Dr. Child denies having
had anything whatever to do with the sittings for those pictures. He denies it
most emphatically, and goes so far as to say (we have many witnesses and proofs
of this) that he

32 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

was out of town, four hundred
miles away, when the said pictures were taken. And so he was, bless his dear
prophetic soul! Meditating and chatting with the nymphs and goblins of Niagara
Falls, so that, when he pleads an alibi, it’s no “fabrication” but the truth for
once.

Unfortunately for the
veracious Dr. Child—”whose character and reputation for truthfulness and moral
integrity no one doubts,” here we quote the words of “Honesty” and “Truth,”
transparent pseudonyms of an “amateur” for detecting, exposing and writing
under the cover of secrecy, who tried to give a friendly push to the doctor in
two articles, but failed in both—unfortunately for H. T. Child, we say, he got
inspired in some evil hour to write a certain article, and for getting the wise
motto, Verba volant, scripta manent, to publish it in The Daily Graphic on Nov.
6th, together with the portraits of John and Katie King.

Now for tins bouquet of the
endorsement of a fact by a truthful man, ‘‘whose moral integrity no one can
doubt.’’

To The Editor of “The Daily
Graphic.”

On the evening of July 20th,
after a large and successful séance, in which Katie had walked out into
the room
in the presence of thirty persons and had disappeared and reappeared in full
view, she remarked to Mr. Leslie and myself that if we, with four others whom she
named, would remain after the séance, she would like to try for her photograph.
We did so, and there were present six persons besides the photographer. I had
procured two dozen magnesian spirals, and, when all was ready, she opened the
door of the cabinet and stood in it, while Mr. Holmes on one side, and I upon
the other, burned these, making a brilliant light. We tried two plates, but
neither of them was satisfactory.

Another effort was
made on
July 23rd, which was successful. We asked her if she would try to have it taken
by daylight. She said she would. We sat with shutters often at 4 pm. In a few
moments Katie appeared at the aperture and said she was ready. She asked to
have one of the windows closed, and that we should hold a shawl to screen her.
As soon as the camera was ready she came out and walked behind the shawl to
the middle of the room, a distance of six or eight feet, where she stood in
front of the camera. She remained in that position until the first picture was
taken, when she retired to the cabinet.

Mr. Holmes proposed that she
should permit him to sit in front of the camera, and should come out and place
her hand upon his shoulder. To this she assented, and desired all present to
avoid looking into her eyes, as this disturbed the conditions very much.

The second picture was then
taken in which she stands behind Mr. Holmes. When the camera was closed she
showed great signs of weakness, and it was necessary to assist her back to the
cabinet, and when she got to the door she appeared ready to sink to the floor
and disappeared [?]. The cabinet door was opened, but she was not to be

33——————————————————THE HOLMES CONTROVERSY.

seen. In a few minutes she
appeared again and remarked that she had not been sufficiently materialized, and
said she would like to try again, if we could wait a little while. We waited
about fifteen minutes, when she rapped on the cabinet, signifying that she was
ready to come out. She did so, and we obtained the Third negative.

(Signed) DR. H. T. CHILD.

And so, Dr. Child,
we have
obtained this, we did that, and we did many other things. Did you? Now, besides
Dr. Child’s truthful assertions about his being out of town, especially at the
time this third negative was obtained, we have the testimony of the
photographer, Dr. Selger, and other witnesses to corroborate the fact. At the
same time, I suppose that Dr. Child will not risk a denial of his own article. I
have it in my possession and keep it, together with many others as curious,
printed like it, and written in black and white. Who fabricates stories? Can the
doctor answer?

How will he creep out of this
dilemma? What rays of his spiritual “sunshine” will be able to de-materialize
such a contradictory fact as this one? Here we have an article taking up two
spacious columns of The Daily Graphic, in which he asserts as plainly as
possible, that he was present himself at the sittings of Katie King for her
portrait, that the spirit come out boldly, in full daylight, that she
disappeared on the threshold of the cabinet, and that he, Dr. Child, helping
her back to it on account of her great weakness, saw that there was no one in
the said cabinet, for the door remained opened. Who did he help? Whose
fluttering heart beat against his paternal arm and waistcoat? Was it the bonny
Eliza? Of course, backed by such reliable testimony of such a truly trustworthy
witness, the pictures sold like wild-fire. Who got the proceeds? Who kept them?
If Dr. Child was not in town when the pictures were taken, then this article is
an “evident fabrication.” On the other hand, if what he says in it is truth,
and he was present at all at the attempt of this bogus picture-taking, then he
certainly must have known “who was who, in 1874,” as the photographer knew it,
and as surely it did not require Argus-eyes to recognize in full daylight with
only one shutter partially closed, a materialized, ethereal spirit, from a
common, “elbow-crooking” mortal woman, whom, though not acquainted with her, the
doctor still “knew well.”

If our self-constituted
leaders, our prominent recorders of the phenomena, will humbug and delude the
public with such reliable statements as this one, how can we Spiritualists
wonder at the masses of incredulous scoffers that keep on politely taking us for
“lunatics” when they do

34 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

not very rudely call us “liars
and charlatans” to our faces? It is not the occasionally cheating “mediums” that
have or can impede the progress of our cause; it’s the exalted exaggerations of
some fanatics on one hand, and the deliberate, unscrupulous statements of those
who delight in dealing in “wholesale fabrications” and “pious frauds” that have
arrested the unusually rapid spreading of Spiritualism in 1874 and brought it to
a dead stop in 1875. For how many years to come yet, who can tell?

In his “After the Storm comes
the Sunshine,” the Doctor makes the following melancholy reflection:

It has been suggested that
going into an atmosphere of fraud, such as surrounds these mediums [ Holmeses]
and being sensitive [ poor Yorick!] I was more liable to be deceived than
others.

We shudder indeed at the
thought of the exposure of so much sensitiveness to so much pollution. Alas!
soiled dove! how very sensitive must a person be who picks up such evil
influences that they actually force him into the grossest of fabrications and
make him invent stories and endorse facts that he has not and could not have
seen. If Dr. Child, victim to his too sensitive nature, is liable to fall so
easily as that under the control of wicked “Diakka,” our friendly advice to him
is to give up Spiritualism as soon as possible, and join a Young Men’s Christian
Association; for then, under the protecting wing of the true orthodox Church, he
can begin a regular fight, like a second St. Anthony, with the orthodox devil.
Such Diakka as he fell in with at the Holmeses’ must beat Old Nick by long odds,
and if he could not withstand them by the unaided strength of his own pure
soul, he may with “bell, book and candle” and the use of holy water be more
fortunate in a tug with Satan, crying as other “Father Confessors” have
heretofore, “Exorciso vos in nomine Lucis!” and signify ing his triumph with a
robust Laus Deo.

H. P. BLAVATSKY

Philadelphia, March,1875

NOTICE TO MEDIUMS

IN compliance with the request
of the Honourable Alexander Aksakoff, Counsellor of State in the Imperial
Chancellery at St. Petersburg, the undersigned hereby give notice that they are
prepared to receive applications from physical mediums who may he willing to go
to Russia, for examination before the committee of the Imperial University.

To avoid disappointment, it
may be well to state that the undersigned will recommend no mediums whose
personal good character is not satisfactorily shown; nor any who will not submit
themselves to a thorough scientific test of their mediumistic powers, in the
city of New York, prior to sailing; nor any who cannot exhibit most of their
phenomena in a lighted room, to be designated by the undersigned, and with such
ordinary furniture as may be found therein.

Approved applications will be
immediately forwarded to St. Petersburg, and upon receipt of orders thereon
from the scientific commission or its representative, M. Aksakoff, proper
certificates and instructions will be given to accepted applicants, and
arrangements made for defraying expenses.

Address the undersigned, in
care of E. Gerry Brown, Editor of The Spiritual Scientist, 18, Exchange Street,
Boston, Mass., who is hereby authorized to receive personal applications from
mediums in the New England States.

HENRY S. OLCOTT.

HELEN P. BLAVATSKY.

A REBUKE—————

I AM truly sorry that a
Spiritualist paper like The Religio-Philosophical Journal, which claims to
instruct and enlighten its readers, should suffer such trash as Mr. Jesse
Sheppard is contributing to its columns to appear without review. I will not
dwell upon the previous letter of this very gifted personage, although
everything he has said concerning Russia and life at St. Petersburg might be
picked to pieces by anyone having merely a superficial acquaintance with the
place and the people; nor will I stop to sniff at his nosegays of high-sounding
names—his Princess Boulkoffs and Princes This and That, which are as
preposterously fictitious as though, in speaking of Americans, some Russian
singing-medium were to mention his friends Prince Jones or Duke Smith, or Earl
Brown—for if he chooses to manufacture noble patrons from the oversloppings of
his poetic imagination, and it amuses him or his readers, no great harm is done.
But when it comes to his saying the things he does in the letter of July 3rd in
that paper, it puts quite a different face upon the matter. Here he pretends to
give historical facts—which never existed. He tells of things he saw
clairvoyantly, and his story is such a tissue of ridiculous, gross anachronisms that they not only show his utter ignorance of Russian history, but
are calculated to injure the cause of Spiritualism by throwing doubt upon all
clairvoyant descriptions. Secondarily in importance they destroy his own
reputation for veracity, stamp him as a trickster and a false writer, and bring
the gravest suspicion upon his claim to possess any mediumship whatever.

What faith can anyone,
acquainted with the rudiments of history, have in a medium who sees another
(Catherine II) giving orders to strangle her son (Paul I), when we all know that
the Emperor Paul ascended the throne upon the decease of the very mother whom
the inventive genius of this musical prodigy makes guilty of infanticide?

Permit me, 0 young seer and
Spiritualist, as a Russian somewhat

37 ———————————————————————A REBUKE.

read in the history of her
country, to refresh your memory. Spiritualism has been laughed at quite enough
recently in consequence of such pious frauds as yours, and as Russian savants
are about to investigate the subject, we may as well go to them with clean
hands. The journal which gives you its hospitality goes to my country, and its
interests will certainly suffer if you are allowed to go on with your embroidery
and spangle-work without rebuke. Remember, young poetico-historian, that the
Emperor Paul was the paternal grandfather of the present Czar, and everyone who
has been at St. Petersburg knows that the “old palace,” which to your spiritual
eye wears such “an appearance of dilapidation and decay, worthy of a castle of
the Middle Ages,” and the one where your Paul was strangled, is an every-day,
modern-looking, respectable building, the successor of one which was pulled down
early in the reign of the late Emperor Nicholas, and known from the beginning
until now as the Pawlowsky Military College for the “Cadets.” And the two
assassins, begotten in your clairvoyant loins—Petreski and Kofski! Really now,
Mr. Sheppard, gentlemanly assassins ought to be very much obliged to you for
these pretty aliases!

It is fortunate for you, dear
sir, that it did not occur to you to discuss these questions in St. Petersburg,
and that you evolved your history from the depths of your own consciousness, for
in our autocratical country one is not permitted to discuss the little
unpleasantnesses of the imperial family history, and the rule would not be
relaxed for a Spanish grandee, or even that more considerable personage, an
American singing-medium. An attempt on your part to do so would assuredly have
interfered with your grand concert, under imperial patronage, and might have led
to your journeying to the borders of Russia under an armed escort befitting your
exalted rank.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

OCCULTISM OR MAGIC—————

AMONG the numerous sciences
pursued by the well-disciplined army of earnest students of the present century,
none has had less honours or more scoffing than the oldest of them—the science
of sciences, the venerable mother-parent of all our modern pigmies. Anxious in
their petty vanity to throw the veil
of oblivion over their undoubted origin, the self-styled positive scientists,
ever on the alert, present to the courageous scholar who tries to deviate from
the beaten highway traced out for him by his dogmatic predecessors, a formidable
range of serious obstacles.

As a rule, Occultism is a
dangerous, double-edged weapon for one to handle who is unprepared to devote his
whole life to it. The theory of it, unaided by serious practice, will ever
remain in the eyes of those prejudiced against such an unpopular cause an idle,
crazy speculation, fit only to charm the ears of ignorant old women. When we
cast a look behind us and see how for the last thirty years modern Spiritualism
has been dealt with, notwithstanding the occurrence of daily, hourly proofs
which speak to all our senses, stare us in the eyes, and utter their voices from
“beyond the great gulf,” how can we hope, I say, that Occultism or Magic—which
stands in relation to Spiritualism as the infinite to the finite, as the cause
to the effect, or as unity to multifariousness—will easily gain ground where
Spiritualism is scoffed at? One who rejects priori or even doubts the
immortality of man’s soul can never believe in its Creator; and, blind to what
is heterogeneous in his eyes, will remain still more blind to the proceeding of
the latter from homogeneity. In relation to the Kabalah, or the compound mystic
text-book of the great secrets of Nature, we do not know of anyone in the
present century who could have commanded a sufficient dose of that moral courage
which fires the heart of the true Adept with the sacred flame of propagandism,
to force him into defying public opinion by displaying familiarity with that
sublime work. Ridicule is the dead-

39————————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.

liest weapon of the age, and
while we read in the records of history of thousands of martyrs who joyfully
braved flames and faggots in support of their mystic doctrines in the past
centuries, we would scarcely be likely to find one individual in the present
times who would be brave enough even to defy ridicule by seriously undertaking
to prove the great truths embraced in the traditions of the Past.

As an instance of the above, I
will mention the article on Rosicrucianism, signed “Hiraf.” This ably-written
essay—notwithstanding some fundamental errors, which, though they are such,
would be hardly noticed except by those who had devoted their lives to the study
of Occultism in its various branches of practical teaching—indicates with
certainty to the practical reader that, for theoretical knowledge, at least, the
author need fear few rivals, still less superiors. His modesty, which I cannot
too much appreciate in his case—though he is safe enough behind the mask of his
fancy pseudonym—need not give him any apprehensions. There are few critics in
this country of Positivism who would willingly risk themselves in an encounter
with such a powerful disputant, on his own ground. The weapons he seems to hold
in reserve, in the arsenal of his wonderful memory, his learning, and his
readiness to give any further information that enquirers may wish for, will
undoubtedly scare off every theorist, unless he is perfectly sure of himself,
which few are. But book-learning—and here I refer only to the subject of
Occultism—vast as it may be, will always
prove insufficient even to the
analytical mind—the most accustomed to extract the quintessence of truth,
disseminated throughout thousands of
contradictory statements—unless supported
by personal experience and practice. Hence “Hiraf” can only expect an encounter
with some one who may hope to find a chance to refute some of his bold assertions on the plea of having just such a slight practical experience. Still, it
must not be understood that these present lines are intended to criticize our
too modest essayist. Far from poor, ignorant me be such a presumptuous thought.
My desire is simple: to help him in his scientific, but, as I said before,
rather hypothetical researches, by telling a little of the little I picked up in
my long travels throughout the length and breadth of the East—that cradle of
Occultism—in the hope of correcting certain erroneous notions he seems to be
labouring under, and which are calculated to confuse uninitiated sincere
enquirers, who might desire to drink at his own source of knowledge.

In the first place, “Hiraf”
doubts whether there are in existence, in

40 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

England or elsewhere, what we
term regular colleges for the neophytes of this Secret Science. I will say from
personal knowledge that such places there are in the East—in India, Asia Minor,
and other countries. As in the primitive days of Socrates and other sages of
antiquity, so now, those who are willing to learn the Great Truth will ever find
the chance if they only “try” to meet some one to lead them to the door of one
“who knows when and how.” If “Hiraf” is right about the seventh rule of the
Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, which says that “the Rose-crux becomes and is not
made,” he may err as to the exceptions which have ever existed among other
Brotherhoods devoted to the pursuit of the same secret knowledge. Then again,
when he asserts, as he does, that Rosicrucianism is almost forgotten, we may
answer him that we do not wonder at it, and add, by way of parenthesis, that,
strictly speaking, the Rosicrucians do not now even exist, the last of that
fraternity having departed in the person of Cagliostro.

“Hiraf” ought to add to the
word Rosicrucianism “that particular sect” at least, for it was but a sect after
all, one of many branches of the same tree.

By forgetting to specify that
particular denomination and by including under the name of Rosicrucians all
those who, devoting their lives to Occultism congregated together in
Brotherhoods, “Hiraf” commits an error by which he may unwittingly lead people
to believe that the Rosicrucians having disappeared, there are no more Kabalists practising Occultism on the face of the earth. He also becomes thereby guilty
of an anachronism, attributing to the Rosicrucians the building of the pyramids
and other majestic monuments, which indelibly exhibit in their architecture the
symbols of the grand religions of the past. For it is not so. If the main object
in view was, and still is, alike, with all the great family of the ancient and
modern Kabalists, the dogmas and formulas of certain sects differ greatly.
Springing one after the other from the great Oriental mother-root, they
scattered broadcast all over the world, and each of them desiring to out-rival
the other by plunging deeper and deeper into the secrets jealously guarded by
Nature, some of them became guilty of the greatest heresies against the
primitive Oriental Kabalah.

While the first followers of
the secret sciences, taught to the Chaldæans by nations whose very name was never
breathed in history, remained stationary in their studies, having arrived at the
maximum, the Omega of the knowledge permitted to man, many of the subse-

41 ————————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.

quent sects separated from
them, and, in their uncontrollable thirst for more knowledge, trespassed beyond
the boundaries of truth and fell into fictions. In consequence of Pythagoras—so
says Jamblichus— having by sheer force of energy and daring penetrated into the
mysteries of the Temple of Thebes, obtained therein his initiation and
afterwards studied the sacred sciences in Egypt for twenty-two years, many
foreigners were subsequently admitted to share the knowledge of the wise men of
the East, who, as a consequence, had many of their secrets divulged. Later
still, unable to preserve them in their purity, these mysteries were so mixed up
with fictions and fables of the Grecian mythology that truth was wholly
distorted.

As the primitive Christian
religion divided, in course of time, into numerous sects, so the science of
Occultism gave birth to a variety of doctrines and various brotherhoods. So the
Egyptian Ophites became the Christian Gnostics, shooting forth the Basilideans
of the second century, and the original Rosicrucians created subsequently the
Paracelsists, or Fire Philosophers, the European Alchemists, and other physical
branches of their sect. (See Hargrave Jennings’ Rosicrucians.) To call
indifferently every Kabalist a Rosicrucian, is to commit the same error as if we
were to call every Christian a Baptist on the ground that the latter are also
Christians.

The Brotherhood of the Rosy
Cross was not founded until the middle of the thirteenth century. and
notwithstanding the assertions of the learned Mosheim, it derives its name
neither from the Latin word Ros (dew), nor from a cross, the symbol of Lux. The
origin of the Brotherhood can he ascertained by any earnest, genuine student of
Occultism, who happens to travel in Asia Minor, if he chooses to fall in with
some of the Brotherhood, and if he is willing to devote himself to the
head-tiring work of deciphering a Rosicrucian manuscript—the hardest thing in
the world-—for it is carefully preserved in the archives of the very Lodge which
was founded by the first Kabalist of that name, but which now goes by another
name. The founder of it, a German Ritter, of the name of Rosencranz, was a man
who, after acquiring a very suspicious reputation through the practice of the
Black Art in his native place, reformed in consequence of a vision. Giving up
his evil practices, he made a solemn vow, and went on foot to Palestine, in
order to make his amende honorable at the Holy Sepulchre. Once there, the
Christian God, the meek, but well-informed Nazarene—trained as he was in the
high school of the Essenians, those

42 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

virtuous descendants of the
botanical as well as astrological and magical Chald to Rosencranz, a Christian
would say, in a vision, but I would suggest, in the shape of a materialized
spirit. The purport of this visitation, as well as the subject of their conversation, remained for ever a mystery to many of the Brethren; but immediately
after that, the ex-sorcerer and Ritter disappeared, and was heard of no more
till the mysterious sect of Rosicrucians was added to the family of Kabalists,
and their powers aroused popular attention, even among the Eastern populations,
indolent and accustomed as they are to live among wonders. The Rosicrucians
strove to combine together the most various branches of Occultism, and they
soon became renowned for the extreme purity of their lives and their
extraordinary powers, as well as for their thorough knowledge of the secret of
secrets.

As alchemists and conjurers
they became proverbial. Later (I need not inform “Hiraf” precisely when, as we
drink at two different sources of knowledge), they gave birth to the more modern
Theosophists, at whose head was Paracelsus, and to the Alchemists, one of the
most celebrated of whom was Thomas Vaughan (seventeenth century), who wrote the
most practical things on Occultism under the name of Eugenius Philalethes. I
know and can prove that Vaughan was, most positively, “made before he became.”

The Rosicrucian Kabalah is but
an epitome of the Jewish and the Oriental ones, combined, the latter being the
most secret of all. The Oriental Kabalah, the practical, full, and only existing
copy, is carefully preserved at the headquarters of this Brotherhood in the
East, and, I may safely vouch, will never come out of its possession. Its very
existence has been doubted by many of the European Rosicrucians. One who wants
“to become” has to hunt for his knowledge through thousands of scattered
volumes, and pick up facts and lessons, bit by bit. Unless he takes the nearest
way and consents “to be made,” he will never become a practical Kabalist, and
with all his learning will remain at the threshold of the “mysterious gate.” The
Kabalah may be used and its truths imparted on a smaller scale now than it was
in antiquity, and the existence of the mysterious Lodge, on account of its
secrecy, doubted, but it does exist and has lost none of the primitive secret
powers of the ancient Chaldæans The lodges, few in number, are divided into sections
and known but to the Adepts; no one would be likely to find them out, unless the
Sages themselves found the neophyte worthy of initiation. Unlike the European
Rosicrucians—who,

43 ————————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.

in order “to become and not to
be made,” have constantly put into practice the word of St. John, who says,
“Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force,” and who have
struggled alone, violently robbing Nature of her secrets—the Oriental
Rosicrucians (for such we will call them, being denied the right to pronounce
their true name), in the serene beatitude of their divine knowledge, are ever
ready to help the earnest student struggling “to become” with practical
knowledge, which dissipates, like a heavenly breeze, the blackest clouds of
sceptical doubt.

“Hiraf” is right again when he
says that

Knowing that their
mysteries,
if divulged, in the present chaotic state of society, would produce mere
confusion and death,

they shut up that knowledge
within themselves. Heirs to the early heavenly wisdom of their first
forefathers, they keep the keys which unlock the most guarded of Nature’s
secrets, and impart them only gradually and with the greatest caution. But still
they do impart sometimes.

Once all such a
cercle vicieux,
“Hiraf” sins likewise in a certain comparison he makes between Christ, Buddha,
and Khoung-foo-tsee, or Confucius. A comparison can hardly be made between the
two former wise and spiritual Illuminati, and the Chinese philosopher. The
higher aspirations and views of the two Christs can have nothing to do with the
cold, practical philosophy of the latter, brilliant anomaly as he was among a
naturally dull and materialistic people, peaceful and devoted to agriculture
from the earliest ages of their history. Confucius can never bear the
slightest comparison with the two great Reformers. Whereas the principles and
doctrines of Christ and Buddha were calculated to embrace the whole of humanity,
Confucius confined his attention solely to his own country, trying to apply his
profound wisdom and philosophy to the wants of his countrymen, and little
troubling his head about the rest of mankind. Intensely Chinese in patriotism
and views, his philosophical doctrines are as much devoid of the purely poetic
element, which characterizes the teachings of Christ and Buddha, the two divine
types, as the religious tendencies of his people lack in that spiritual
exaltation which we find, for instance, in India. Khoung-foo-tsee has not even
the depth of feeling and the slight spiritual striving of his contemporary, Lao-tsee.
Says the learned Ennemoser:

44 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

The spirits of Christ and
Buddha have left indelible, eternal traces all over the face of the world. The
doctrines of Confucius can he mentioned only as the most brilliant proceedings
of cold human reasoning.

Harvey, in his Universal
History, has depicted the Chinese nation perfectly, in a few words:

Their heavy, childish, cold,
sensual nature explains the peculiarities of their history.

Hence any comparison between
the first two Reformers and Confucius, in an essay on Rosicrucianism, in which
“Hiraf” treats of the Science of Sciences and invites the thirsty for knowledge
to drink at her inexhaustible source, seems inadmissible.

Further, when our learned
author asserts so dogmatically that the Rosicrucian learns, though he never
uses, the secret of immortality in earthly life, he asserts only what he
himself, in his practical inexperience, thinks impossible. The words “never”
and “impossible” ought to be erased from the dictionary of humanity, until the
time at least when the great Kabalah shall all be solved, and so rejected or
accepted. The Count St. Germain is, until this very time, a living mystery, and
the Rosicrucian Thomas Vaughan another one. The countless authorities we have
in literature, as well as in oral tradition (which sometimes is the more
trustworthy), about this wonderful Count’s having been met and recognized in
different centuries, is no myth. Anyone who admits one of the practical truths
of the occult sciences taught by the Kabalah tacitly admits them all. It must be
Hamlet’s “to be or not to be,” and if the Kabalah is true, then St. Germain need
be no myth.

But I am digressing from my
object, which is, firstly, to show the slight differences between the two
Kabalahs, that of the Rosicrucians and time Oriental one; and, secondly, to say
that the hope expressed by “Hiraf” to see the subject better appreciated at some
future day than it has been till now, may perhaps become more than a hope. Time
will show man things; till then, let us heartily thank “Hiraf” for this first
well-aimed shot at those stubborn scientific runaways, who, once before the
Truth, avoid looking her in the face, and dare not even throw a glance behind
them, lest they should be forced to see that which would greatly lessen their
self-sufficiency. As a practical follower of Eastern Spiritualism, I can
confidently wait for the time, when, with the timely help of those ‘‘who know,’’
American Spiritualism, which even in its present shape has proved such a sore in
the side of the materialists, will become a science and a thing of mathematical
certi-

45 ———————————————————OCCULTISM OR MAGIC.

tude, instead of being
regarded only as the crazy delusion of epileptic monomaniacs.

The first Kabalah in which a
mortal man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and
show the keys to

Those masked doors in the
ramparts of Nature through which no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread
sentries never seen upon this side her wall,

was compiled by a certain
Simeon Ben Iochai, who lived at the time of the second Temple’s destruction.
Only about thirty years after the death of this renowned Kabalist, his MSS. and
written explanations, which had till then remained in his possession as a most
precious secret, were used by his son Rabbi Elizzar and other learned men.
Making a compilation of the whole, they so produced the famous work called Sohar
(God’s splendour). This book proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent
Kabalists, their source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and
genuine Kabalahs were more or less carefully copied from the former. Before
that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down in an unbroken line of merely
oral tradition as far back as man could trace himself on earth. They were
scrupulously and jealously guarded by the wise men of Chald India, Persia and
Egypt, and passed from one Initiate to another, in the same purity of form as
when handed down to the first man by the angels, students of God’s great
Theosophic Seminary. For the first time since the world’s creation, the secret
doctrines, passing through Moses who was initiated in Egypt, underwent some
slight alterations.

In consequence of the personal
ambition of this great prophet medium, he succeeded in passing off his familiar
spirit, the wrathful “Jehovah,” for the spirit of God himself, and so won
undeserved laurels and honours. The same influence prompted him to alter some
of the principles of the great oral Kabalah in order to make them the more
secret. These principles were laid out in symbols by him in the first four books
of the Pentateuch, but for some mysterious reasons he with held them from
Deuteronomy. Having initiated his seventy Elders in his own way, the latter
could give but what they had received them selves, and so was prepared the first
opportunity for heresy, and the erroneous interpretation of the symbols. While
the Oriental Kabalah remained in its pure primitive shape, the Mosaic or Jewish
one was full of drawbacks, and the keys to many of the secrets—forbidden by the
Mosaic law—purposely misinterpreted. The powers conferred by it on the Initiates
were formidable still, and of all the most renowned

46 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Kabalists, King Solomon and
his bigoted parent, David, not withstanding his penitential psalms, were the
most powerful. But still the doctrine remained secret and purely oral, until, as
I have said before, the days of the second Temple’s destruction. Philologically
speaking, the very word Kabalah is formed from two Hebrew words, meaning to
receive, as in former times the Initiate received it orally and directly from
his Master, and the very book of the Sohar was written out on received
information, which was handed down as an unvarying stereo typed tradition by the
Orientals, and altered, through the ambition of Moses, by the Jews.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

SPIRITUALISTIC TRICKSTERS—————

A MOST outrageous swindle was
perpetrated upon the public last Sunday evening at the Boston Theatre. Some
persons with no higher aspirations in the world than a lust for a few dollars to
fill their pockets, depleted by unsuccessful cheap shows, advertised a “séance,”
and engaged as “mediums” some of the most impudent impostors with which the
world is cursed. They furthermore abused public confidence by causing it to be
understood that these people were to appear before the scientific commission at
St. Petersburg.

Is it not about time that some
Society in Boston should be sufficiently strong financially, and have members
who will have the requisite energy to act in an emergency like this? Common
sense would dictate what might be done, and a determined will would overcome all
obstacles. Spiritualism needs a Vigilance Committee. Public opinion will justify
any measures that will tend to check this trifling. “Up, and at them!” should
be the watchword until we have rid society of these pests and their supporters.

The press of Boston are
disposed to be fair towards Spiritualists. But if Spiritualists do not care
enough for Spiritualism to defend it from tricksters who have not sufficient
skill to merit them the title of jugglers, how can they expect any different
treatment than that it is receiving?

As a proof of the sincerity of
the Boston press and also in support and further explanation of the above we
might mention that the following card, sent to all the morning dailies, was
accepted and printed in Tuesday’s edition.

Boston, July 19, 1875.
—————

SIR,—The undersigned desire to
say that the persons who advertised a so-called spiritualistic exhibition at the
Boston Theatre last evening were guilty of false representations to the public.
We are alone empowered by the Academy of Sciences attached to the Imperial
University of St. Petersburg, Russia, to select the mediums

48 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

who shall be invited by that
body to display their powers during the forthcoming scientific investigation of
Spiritualism, and Mr. H. Gerry Brown, editor . Scientist, of this city, is our
only authorized deputy.

Neither “F. Warren,” “Prof. J.
T. Bates,” “Miss I “Mrs. S. Gould,” nor “Miss Lillie Darling” has been selected,
or is at all likely to be selected for that honour.

As this swindle may be again
attempted, we desire to say, once for all, that no medium accepted by us will be
obliged to exhibit his powers to earn money to de fray his expenses, nor will
any such exhibition be tolerated. The Imperial University of St. Petersburg
makes its investigation in the interest of science—not to assist charlatans to
give juggling performances in theatres, upon the strength of our certificates.
HENRY S.
OLC0YT.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

THE SEARCH AFTER OCCULTISM—————

[ The Spiritual Scientist.]

BEING daily in receipt of
numerous letters, written with the view of obtaining advice as to the best
method of receiving information respecting Occultism, and the direct relation
it bears to modern Spiritualism, and not having sufficient time at my disposal
to answer these requests, I now propose to facilitate the mutual labour of
myself and correspondents by naming herein a few of the principal works
treating upon Magism, and the mysteries of such modern Hermetists.

To this I feel bound to add,
respecting what I have stated before, to wit: that would-be aspirants must not
lure themselves with the idea of any possibility of their becoming practical
Occultists by mere book-knowledge. The works of the Hermetic philosophers were
never intended for the masses, as Mr. Charles Sotheran, a learned member of the
Society Rosæ Crucis, in a late essay observes;

Gabriel Rossetti in his
disquisitions on the anti-papal spirit which produced the Reformation shows that
the art of speaking and writing in a language which bears a double
interpretation is of very great antiquity, that it was in practice among the
priests of Egypt, brought thence by the Manichees, whence it passed to the Ternplars
and Albigenses, spread over Europe, and brought about the Reformation.

The ablest book that was ever
written on Symbols and Mystic Orders, is most certainly Hargrave Jennings’ The
Rosicrucians, and yet it has been repeatedly called “obscure trash” in my
presence, and that too, by individuals who were most decidedly well-versed in
the rites and mysteries of modern Freemasonry. Persons who lack even the latter
knowledge, can easily infer from this what would be the amount of information
they might derive from still more obscure and mystical works; for if we compare
Hargrave Jennings’ book with some of the mediæval treatises and ancient works of the
most noted Alchemists and Magi, we might find the latter as much more obscure
than the former—as regards language—as a pupil in celestial philosophy would

50 ————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.

find the Book of the Heavens,
if he should examine a far distant star with the naked eye, rather than with the
help of a powerful telescope. Far from me, though, the idea of disparaging in
anyone the laudable impulse to search ardently after Truth, however arid and
ungrateful the task may appear at first sight; for my own principle has ever
been to make the Light of Truth the beacon of my life. The words uttered by
Christ eighteen centuries ago: “Believe and you will understand,” can be applied
in the present case, and repeating them with but a slight modification, I may
well say: “Study and you will believe.”

But to particularize one or
another book on Occultism, to those who are anxious to begin their studies in
the hidden mysteries of nature, is something the responsibility of which I am
not prepared to assume. What may be clear to one who is intuitional, if read in
the same book by another person might prove meaningless. Unless one is prepared
to devote to it his whole life, the superficial knowledge of Occult Sciences
will lead him surely to become the target for millions of ignorant scoffers to
aim their blunderbusses loaded with ridicule and chaff against. Besides this, it
is in more than one way dangerous to select this science as a mere pastime. One
must bear for ever in mind the impressive fable of Œdipus, and beware of the
same consequences. Œdipus unriddled but one-half of the enigma offered him by
the Sphinx and caused its death; the other half of the mystery avenged the death
of the symbolic monster, and forced the King of Thebes to prefer blindness and
exile in his despair rather than face what he did not feel him self pure enough
to encounter. He unriddled the man, the form, and had forgotten God, the idea.

If a man would follow in the
steps of Hermetic philosophers he must prepare himself beforehand for martyrdom.
He must give up personal pride and all selfish purposes, and be ready for
everlasting encounters with friends and foes. He must part, once for all, with
every remembrance of his earlier ideas, on all and on everything. Existing
religions, knowledge, science, must rebecome a blank book for him, as in the
days of his babyhood, for if he wants to succeed he must learn a new alphabet on
the lap of Mother Nature, every letter of which will afford a new insight to
him, every syllable and word an Unexpected revelation. The two hitherto
irreconcilable foes, science and theology—the Montecchi and Capuletti of the
nineteenth century—will ally themselves with the ignorant masses against the
modern Occultist. If we have outgrown the age of stakes, we are in the heyday,
per

51 ——————————————————THE SEARCH AFTER OCCULTISM.

contra, of slander, the venom
of the press, and all these mephitic venticelli of calumny so vividly expressed
by the immortal Don Basilio. To science it will be the duty—arid and sterile as
a matter of course—of the Kabbalist to prove that from the beginning of time
there was but one positive science—Occultism; that it was the mysterious lever
of all intellectual forces, the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil of the allegorical paradise, from whose gigantic trunk sprang in every direction boughs,
branches and twigs, the former shooting forth straight enough at first, the
latter deviating with every inch of growth, assuming more and more fantastical
appearances, till at last one after the other lost its vital juice, got
deformed, and, drying up, finally broke off, scattering the ground afar with
heaps of rubbish. To theology the Occultist of the future will have to
demonstrate that the Gods of the mythologies, the Elohims of Israel as well as
the religious and theological mysteries of Christianity, to begin with the
Trinity, sprang from the sanctuaries of Memphis and Thebes; that their mother
Eve is but the spiritualized Psyche of old, both of them paying a like penalty
for their curiosity, descending to Hades or hell, the latter to bring back to
earth the famous Pandora’s box, the former to search out and crush the head of
the serpent—symbol of time and evil, the crime of both expiated by the pagan
Prometheus and the Christian Lucifer; the first delivered by Hercules, the
second conquered by the Saviour.

Furthermore, the Occultist
will have to prove to Christian theology, publicly, what many of its priesthood
are well aware of in secret, namely, that their God on earth was a Kabbalist, the
meek representative of a tremendous Power, which, if misapplied, might shake
the world to its foundations; and that of all their evangelical symbols, there
is not one but can be traced up to its parent fount. For instance, their
incarnated Verbum or Logos was worshipped at his birth by the three Magi led on
by the star, and received from them the gold, the frankincense and myrrh—the
whole of which is simply an excerpt from the Kabalah our modern theologians
despise, and the representation of another and still more mysterious “Ternary”
embodying allegorically in its emblems the highest secrets of the Kabalah.

A clergy whose main object has
ever been to make of their Divine Cross the gallows of Truth and Freedom, could
not do otherwise than try and bury in oblivion the origin of that same cross,
which, in the most primitive symbols of the Egyptians’ magic, represents the key
to heaven. Their anathemas are powerless in our days—the multitude is

52 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

wiser; but the greatest danger
awaits us just in that latter direction, if we do not succeed in making the
masses remain at least neutral—till they come to know better—in this forthcoming
conflict between Truth, Superstition and Presumption, or to express it in other
terms, Occult Spiritualism, Theology and Science. We have to fear neither the
miniature thunderbolts of the clergy, nor the unwarranted negations of science.
But Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic
tyrant—this thousand-headed Hydra, the more dangerous for being composed of
individual mediocrities—is not an enemy to be scorned by any would-be Occultist,
courageous as he may be. Many of the far more innocent Spiritualists have left
their sheepskins in the clutches of this ever-hungry, roaring lion, for he is
the most dangerous of our three classes of enemies. What will be the fate in
such a case of an unfortunate Occultist, if he once succeeds in demonstrating
the close relationship existing between the two? The masses of people, though
they do not generally appreciate the science of truth or have real knowledge, on
the other hand are unerringly directed by mere instinct; they have
intuitionally—if I may be allowed to so express myself—an idea of what is
formidable in its genuine strength. People will never conspire except against
real Power. In their blind ignorance, the Mysteries and the Unknown have been,
and ever will be, objects of terror for them. Civilization may progress; human
nature will remain the same throughout all ages. Occultists, beware!

Let it be understood then that
I address myself but to the truly courageous and persevering. Besides the danger
expressed above, the difficulties in becoming a practical Occultist in this
country are next to insurmountable. Barrier upon barrier, obstacles in every
form and shape, will present themselves to the student; for the keys of the
Golden Gate leading to the Infinite Truth lie buried deep, and the gate itself
is enclosed in a mist which clears up only before the ardent rays of implicit
faith. Faith alone—one grain of which as large as a mustard-seed, according to
the words of Christ, can lift a mountain—is able to find out how simple becomes
the Kabalah to the Initiate once he has succeeded in conquering the first
abstruse difficulties. The dogma of it is logical, easy and absolute. The
necessary union of ideas and signs; the trinity of words, letters, numbers, and
theorems; the religion of it can be compressed into a few words. “It is the
Infinite condensed in the hand of an infant,” says Eliphas Lévi. Ten ciphers,
twenty-two alphabetical letters, one triangle, a square and a circle. Such are

53 ——————————————————THE SEARCH AFTER OCCULTISM.

the elements of the Kabalah
from whose mysterious bosom sprang all the religions of the past and present;
which endowed all the Free-masonic associations with their symbols and secrets,
which alone can reconcile human reason with God and Faith, Power with Freedom,
Science with Mystery, and which has alone the keys of present, past and future.

The first difficulty for the
aspirant lies in the utter impossibility of his comprehending, as I said before,
the meaning of the best books written by Hermetic philosophers. These, who
mainly lived in the mediæval ages, prompted on the one hand by their duty towards
their brethren, and by their desire to impart only to them and their successors
the glorious truths, and on the other very naturally desirous to avoid the
clutches of the bloodthirsty Christian Inquisition, enveloped themselves more
than ever in mystery. They invented new signs and hieroglyphs, renovated the
ancient symbolical language of the high priests of antiquity, who had used it as
a sacred barrier between their holy rites and the ignorance of the profane, and
created a veritable Kabalistic slang. This latter, which continually blinded the
false neophyte, attracted towards the science only by his greediness for wealth
and power which he would have surely misused were he to succeed, is a living,
eloquent, clear language, but it is and can become such only to the true
disciple of Hermes.

But were it even otherwise,
and could books on Occultism, written in a plain and precise language be
obtained in order to get initiated in the Kabalah, it would not be sufficient to
understand and meditate on certain authors. Galatinus and Pic de la Mirandola,
Paracelsus and Robertus de Fluctibus do not furnish one with the key to the
practical mysteries. They simply state what can be done and why it is done; but
they do not tell one how to do it. More than one philosopher who has by heart
the whole of the Hermetic literature, and who has devoted to the study of it
upwards of thirty or forty years of his life, fails when he believes he is about
reaching the final great result. One must understand the Hebrew authors, such as
Sepher Yelzirah, for instance, learn by heart the great book of the Zohar in
its original tongue, master the Kabalah Denudata from the Collection of 1684
(Paris); follow up the Kabalistic pneumatics at first, and then throw oneself
headlong into the turbid waters of that mysterious * . . . never tried to explain:

the Prophecy of Ezekiel and
the Apocalypse, two Kabalistic treatises,—————
* The cutting is here
imperfect—some paragraph or so wanting.

54 ————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.

reserved without doubt for the
commentaries of the Magi kings, books closed with the seven seals to the
faithful Christian, but perfectly clear to the Infidel initiated in the Occult
Sciences.

Thus the works on Occultism,
were not, I repeat, written for the masses, but for those of the Brethren who
make the solution of the mysteries of the Kabalah the principal object of their
lives, and who are supposed to have conquered the first abstruse difficulties of
the Alpha of Hermetic philosophy.

To fervent and persevering
candidates for the above science, I have to offer but one word of advice, “try
and become.” One single journey to the Orient, made in the proper spirit, and
the possible emergencies arising from the meeting of what may seem no more than
the chance acquaintances and adventures of any traveller, may quite as likely as
not throw wide open to the zealous student the heretofore closed doors of the
final mysteries. I will go farther and say that such a journey, performed with
the omnipresent idea of the one object, and with the help of a fervent will, is
sure to produce more rapid, better, and far more practical results, than the
most diligent study of Occultism in books—even though one were to devote to it
dozens of years.

In the name of Truth, yours,

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC—————

HAPPENING to be on a visit to
Ithaca, where spiritual papers in general, and The Banner of Light in
particular, are very little read, but where, luckily, The Scientist has found
hospitality in several houses, I learned through your paper of the intensely
interesting and very erudite attack in an editorial of The Banner, on “Magic,”
or rather on those who had the absurdity to believe in Magic. As hints
concerning myself—at least in the fragment I
see—are very decently veiled, and, as it appears, Col. Olcott alone, just now,
is offered by way of a pious holocaust on the altar erected to the angel-world
by some Spiritualists, who seem to be terribly in earnest, I will—leaving the
said gentleman to take care of himself, provided he thinks it worth his
trouble—proceed to say a few words only, in reference to the alleged
non-existence of Magic.

Were I to give anything on my
own authority and base my defence of Magic only on what I have seen myself
and
know to he true in relation to that science, as a resident of many years’
standing in India and Africa, I might, perhaps, risk to be called by Mr.
Colby—with that unprejudiced, spiritualized politeness, which so distinguishes
the venerable editor of The Banner of Light—”an irresponsible woman”; and that
would not be for the first time either. Therefore, to his astonishing assertion
that no Magic whatever either exists or has existed in this world, I will try to
find as good authorities as himself, and maybe better ones, and thus politely
proceed to contradict him on that particular point.

Heterodox Spiritualists, like
myself, must be cautious in our days and proceed with prudence, if they do not
wish to be persecuted with all the untiring vengeance of that mighty army of”
Indian controls” and miscellaneous “guides” of our bright Summer-Land.

When the writer of the
editorial says that he—Does not think it at all improbable that there are
humbugging spirits who try to fool certain aspirants to
occult knowledge with the notion that there is such a thing as magic, (?)

56 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

then, on the other hand, I can
answer him that I, for one, not only think it probable but I am perfectly sure
and can take my oath to the certainty, that more than once spirits who were
either very elementary or very unprogressed ones, calling themselves Theodore
Parker, have been most decidedly fooling and disrespectfully humbugging our most
esteemed editor of The Banner of Light into the notion that the Apennines were
in Spain, for instance.

Furthermore, supported in my
assertions by thousands of intelligent Spiritualists, generally known for their
integrity and truthfulness I could furnish numberless proofs and instances where
the Elementary Diakka, Esrito malims etfarfadeto and other such-like unreliable
and ignorant denizens of the spirit-world, arraying themselves in pompous,
world-known and famous names, suddenly gave the bewildered witnesses such
deplorable, unheard-of, slipslop trash, and betirnes some thing worse, that more
than one person who, previous to that, was an earnest believer in the spiritual
philosophy, has either silently taken to his heels, or if he happened to have
been formerly a Roman Catholic, has devoutly tried to recall to memory with
which hand he used to cross himself, and then cleared out with the most fervent
exclamation of “ Vade reyro, Satanas!” Such is the opinion of every educated
Spiritualist.

If that indomitable Attila.
the persecutor of modern Spiritualism and mediums, Dr. G. Beard, had offered
such a remark against Magic, I would not wonder, as a too profound devotion to
blue pill and black draught is generally considered the best antidote against
mystic and spiritual speculations; but for a firm Spiritualist—a believer in
invisible, mysterious worlds swarming with beings, the true nature of which is
still an unriddled mystery to everyone—to step in and then sarcastically reject
that which has been proved to exist and believed in for countless ages by
millions of persons, wiser than himself, is too audacious! And that sceptic is
the editor of a leading Spiritual paper!—a man whose first duty should be to
help his readers to seek, untiringly and perseveringly, for the truth in
whatever form it might present itself; but who takes the risk of dragging
thousands of people into error, by pinning them to his personal rose-water faith
and credulity. Every serious, earnest-minded Spiritualist must agree with me in
saying, that if modern Spiritualism remains, for a few years only, in its
present condition of chaotic anarchy, or still worse, if it is allowed to run
its mad course, shooting forth on all sides idle hypotheses based on

57 ———————————————————THE SCIENCE OP MAGIC.

superstitious, groundless
ideas, then will the Dr. Beards, Dr. Marvins and others, known as scientific (?)
sceptics, triumph indeed.

Really, it seems to be a waste
of time to answer such ridiculous, ignorant assertions as the one which forced
me to take up my pen. Any well-read Spiritualist who finds the statement “that
there ever was such a science as magic, has never been proved, nor ever will
be,” will need no answer from myself, nor anyone else, to cause him to shrug his
shoulders and smile, as he probably has smiled, at the wonderful attempt of Mr.
Colby’s spirits to reorganize geography by placing the Apennines in Spain.

Why, man alive, did you never
open a book in your life besides your own records of Tom, Dick and Harry
descending from upper spheres to remind their Uncle Sam that he had torn his
gaiters or broken his pipe in the far West?

Did you suppose that Magic is
confined to witches riding astride broomsticks and then turning themselves into
black cats? Even the latter superstitious trash, though it was never called
Magic but Sorcery, does not appear so great an absurdity for one to accept who
firmly believes in the transfiguration of Mrs. Compton into Katie Brinks. The
laws of nature are unchangeable. The conditions under which a medium can be
transformed, entirely absorbed in the process by the spirit, into the semblance
of another person, will hold good whenever that spirit, or rather force, should
have a fancy to take the form of a cat.

The exercise of
magical power
is the exercise of powers natural but superior to the ordinary functions of Nature. A
miracle is not a violation of the laws of Nature, except for ignorant people.
Magic is but a science, a profound knowledge of the Occult forces in Nature, and
of the laws governing the visible or the invisible world. Spiritualism in the
hands of an Adept becomes Magic, for he is learned in the art of blending
together the laws of the universe, without breaking any of them and thereby
violating Nature. In the hands of an experienced medium, Spiritualism becomes
unconscious sorcery; for, by allowing himself to become the helpless tool of a
variety of spirits, of whom he knows nothing save what the latter permit him to
know, he opens, unknown to himself, a door of communication between the two
worlds, through which emerge the blind forces of Nature lurking in the astral
light, as well as good and bad spirits.

A powerful mesmerizer,
profoundly learned in his science, such as

58 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Baron Dupotet, and Regazzoni
Pietro d’Amicis of Bologna, are magicians, for they have become the Adepts, the
initiated ones, into the great mystery of our Mother Nature. Such men as the
above-mentioned— and such were Mesmer and Cagliostro—control the spirits instead
of allowing their subjects or themselves to be controlled by them; and
Spiritualism is safe in their hands. In the absence of experienced Adepts
though, it is always safer for a naturally clairvoyant medium to trust to good
luck and chance, and try to judge of the tree by its fruits. Bad spirits will
seldom communicate through a pure, naturally good and virtuous person; and it is
still more seldom that pure spirits will choose impure channels. Like attracts
like.

But to return to Magic. Such
men as Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lulli, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Robert
Fludd, Eugenius Philalethes, Kunrath, Roger Bacon and others of similar
character, in our sceptical century, are generally taken for visionaries; but
so, too, are modern Spiritualists and mediums—nay worse, for charlatans and
poltroons; but never were the Hermetic philosophers taken by anyone for fools
and idiots, as, unfortunately for ourselves and the cause, every unbeliever
takes all of us believers in Spiritualism to be. Those Hermetics and
philosophers may be disbelieved and doubted now, as everything else is doubted,
but very few doubted their knowledge and power during their lifetime, for they
could always prove what they claimed, having command over those forces which now
command helpless mediums. They had their science and demonstrated philosophy to
help them to throw down ridiculous negations, while we sentimental
Spiritualists, rocking ourselves to sleep with our “Sweet Bye-and-Bye,” are now
unable to recognize a spurious phenomenon from a genuine one, and are daily
deceived by vile charlatans. Even though doubted then, as Spiritualism is in our
day, still these philosophers were held in awe and reverence, even by those who
did not implicitly believe in their Occult potency, for they were giants of
intellect. Profound knowledge, as well as cultured intellectual powers, will
always be respected and revered; but our mediums and their adherents are laughed
at and scorned, and we are all made to suffer, because the phenomena are left to
the whims and pranks of self-willed and other mischievous spirits, and we are
utterly powerless in controlling them.

To doubt Magic is to reject
History itself, as well as the testimony of ocular witnesses thereof, during a
period embracing over 4,000 years. Beginning with Homer, Moses, Hermes,
Herodotus, Cicero, Plutarch,

59 ————————————————————THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC.

Pythagoras, Apollonius of
Tyana, Simon the Magician, Plato, Pausanias, Iamblichus, and following this
endless string of great men— historians and philosophers, who all of them either
believed in Magic or were magicians themselves—and ending with our modern
authors, such as W. Howitt, Ennemoser, G. des Mousseaux, Marquis de Mirville and
the late Eliphas Lévi who was a magician himself—among all of these great names and
authors, we find but the solitary Mr. Colby, editor of The Banner of Light, who
ignores that there ever was such a science as Magic. He innocently believes the
whole of the sacred army of Bible prophets, commencing with Father Abraham,
including Christ, to be merely mediums; in the eyes of Mr. Colby they were all
of them acting under control! Fancy Christ, Moses, or an Apollonius of Tyana,
controlled by an Indian guide! The venerable editor ignores, perhaps, that
spiritual mediums were better known in those days to the ancients, than they are
now to us, and he seems to be equally unaware of the fact that the inspired
sibyls, pythonesses, and other mediums were entirely guided by their high priest
and those who were initiated into the esoteric theurgy and mysteries of the
temples. Theurgy was Magic; as in modern times, the sibyls and pythonesses were
mediums; but their high priests were magicians. All the secrets of their
theology, which included Magic, or the art of invoking ministering spirits, were
in their hands. They possessed the science of discerning spirits; a science
which Mr. Colby does not possess at all—to his great regret, no doubt. By this
power they controlled the spirits at will, allowing but the good ones to absorb
their mediums. Such is the explanation of Magic—the real, existing, While or
Sacred Magic, which ought to be in the hands of science now, and would be, if
science had profited by the lessons which Spiritualism has inductively taught
for these last twenty-seven years.

That is the reason why no
trash was allowed to be given by unprogressed spirits in the days of old. The
oracles of the sibyls and inspired priestesses could never have affirmed Athens
to be a town in India, or jumped Mount Ararat from its native place down to
Egypt.

If the sceptical writer of the
editorial had, moreover, devoted less time to little prattling Indian spirits
and more to profitable lectures, he might have learned perhaps at the same time
that the ancients had their illegal mediums—I mean those who belonged to no
special temple—and thus the spirits
controlling them, unchecked by the expert hand of the magician, were left to
themselves, and had all the opportunity

60 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

possible to perform their
capers on their helpless tools. Such mediums were generally considered obsessed
and possessed, which they were in fact, in other words, according to the Bible
phraseology, “they had seven devils in them.” Furthermore, these mediums were
ordered to be put to death, for the intolerant Moses the magician, who was
learned in the wisdom of Egypt, had said, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live.” Alone the Egyptians and Greeks, even more humane and just than Moses,
took such into their temples, and, when found unfit for the sacred duties of
prophecy cured them in the same way as Jesus Christ cured Mary of Magdala and
many others, by “casting out the seven devils.” Either Mr. Colby and Co. must
completely deny the miracles of Christ, the Apostles, Prophets, Thaumaturgists
and Magicians, and so deny point-blank every bit of the sacred and profane histories, or he must confess that there is a Power in this world which can command
spirits—at least the bad and unprogressed ones, the elementary and Diakka. The
pure ones, the disembodied, will never descend to our sphere unless attracted by
a current of powerful sympathy and love, or on some useful mission.

Far from me the thought of
casting odium and ridicule on all mediums. I am myself a Spiritualist, if, as
says Colonel Olcott, a firm belief in our spirit’s immortality and the knowledge
of a constant possibility for us to communicate with the spirits of our
departed and loved ones, either through honest, pure mediums, or by means of the
Secret Science, constitutes a Spiritualist. And I am not of those fanatical
Spiritualists, to be found in every country, who blindly accept the claims of
every “spirit,” for I have seen too much of various phenomena, undreamed of in
America; I know that Magic does exist, and 10,000 editors of spiritual papers
cannot change my belief in what I know. There is a White and a Black Magic, and
no one who has ever travelled in the East can doubt it, if he has taken the
trouble to investigate. My faith being firm I am therefore ever ready to
support and protect any honest medium—aye, and even occasionally one who appears
dishonest, for I know but too well what helpless tools and victims such
mediums are in the hands of unprogressed, invisible beings. I am furthermore
aware of the malice and wickedness of the elementaries, and how far they can
inspire not only a sensitive medium, but any other person as well. Though I may
be an “irresponsible,” despite the harm some mediums do to earnest Spiritualists
by their unfairness, one-sidedness, and spiritual sentimentalism, I feel safe to
say that

61 ————————————————————THE SCIENCE OP MAGIC.

generally I am quick enough to
detect whenever a medium is cheating under control, or cheating consciously.

Thus Magic exists, and has
existed, ever since prehistoric ages. Beginning in history with the Samothracian
Mysteries, it followed its course uninterruptedly, and ended for a time with
the expiring theurgic rites and ceremonies of Christianized Greece; then
reappeared for a time again with the Neo-Platonic, Alexandrian school, and,
passing by initiation to sundry solitary students and philosophers, safely
crossed the mediæval ages, and notwithstanding the furious persecutions of the
Church, resumed its fame in the hands of such Adepts as Paracelsus and several
others, and finally died out in Europe with the Count St. Germain and Cagliostro,
to seek refuge from frozen-hearted scepticism in its native country of the East.

In India, Magic has never died
out, and blossoms there as well as ever. Practised, as in ancient Egypt, only
within the secret enclosure of the temples, it was, and still is, called the
“Sacred Science.” For it is a science, based on the occult forces of Nature; and
not merely a blind belief in the poll-parrot talking of crafty elementaries,
ready to forcibly prevent real, disembodied spirits from communicating with
their loved ones whenever they can do so.

Some time since a Mr.
Mendenhall devoted several columns, in The Religio-Philosophical Journal, to
questioning, cross-examining, and criticizing the mysterious Brotherhood of
Luxor. He made a fruitless attempt at forcing the said Brotherhood to answer
him, and thus unveil the sphinx.

I can satisfy Mr. Mendenhall.
The Brotherhood of Luxor is one of the sections of the Grand Lodge of which I am
a member. If this gentleman entertains any doubt as to my statement—which I have
no doubt he will—he can, if he chooses, write to Lahore for information.
If, perchance, the seven of the committee were so rude as not to answer him, and
should refuse to give him the desired information, I can then offer him a little
business transaction. Mr. Mendenhall, as far as I remember, has two wives in the
spirit world. Both of these ladies materialize at M. Mott’s, and often hold very
long conversations with their husband, as the latter told us several times and
over his own signature; adding, moreover, that he had no doubt whatever of the
identity of the said spirits. If so, let one of the departed ladies tell Mr.
Mendenhall the name of that section of the Grand Lodge I belong to. For real,
genuine, disembodied spirits, if both are what they claim

62 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

to be, the matter is more than
easy; they have but to enquire of other spirits, look into my thoughts, and so
on; for a disembodied entity, an immortal spirit, it is the easiest thing in the
world to do. Then, if the gentleman I challenge, though I am deprived of the
pleasure of his acquaintance, tells me the true name of the section—which name
three gentlemen in New York, who are accepted neophytes of our Lodge, know
well—I pledge myself to give to Mr. Mendenhall the true statement concerning
the Brotherhood, which is not composed of spirits, as he may think, but of
living mortals, and I will, moreover, if he desires it, put him in direct
communication with the Lodge as I have done for others. Methinks, Mr. Mendenhall
will answer that no such name can be given correctly by the spirits, for no such
Lodge or Section either, exists at all, and thus close the discussion.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

(From The Spiritual
Scientist.)

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY

THE circumstances attending
the sudden death of M. Delessert, inspector of the Police de Surete seem to have
made such an impression upon the Parisian authorities that they were recorded in
unusual detail. Omitting all particulars except what are necessary to explain
matters, we produce here the undoubtedly strange history.

In the fall of
1861 there came
to Paris a man who called himself Vic de Lassa, and was so inscribed upon his
passports. He came from Vienna, and said he was a Hungarian, who owned estates
on the borders of the Banat, not far from Zenta. He was a small man, aged
thirty-five, with pale and mysterious face, long blonde hair, a vague, wandering
blue eye, and a mouth of singular firmness. He dressed carelessly and
unaffectedly, and spoke and talked without much empressement. His companion,
presumably his wife, on the other hand, ten years younger than himself, was a
strikingly beautiful woman, of that dark, rich, velvety, luscious, pure
Hungarian type which is so nigh akin to the gipsy blood. At the theatres, on the
Bois, at the cafes, on the boulevards, and everywhere that idle Paris disports
itself, Madame Aimee de Lassa attracted great attention and made a sensation.

They lodged in luxurious
apartments on the Rue Richelieu, frequented the best places, received good
company, entertained handsomely, and acted in every way as if possessed of
considerable wealth. Lassa had always a good balance chez Schneider, Rater et
Cie, the Austrian bankers in Rue Rivoli, and wore diamonds of conspicuous lustre.

How did it happen then, that
the Prefect of Police saw fit to suspect Monsieur and Madame de Lassa, and
detailed Paul Delessert, one of the most ruse inspectors of the force, to “pipe”
him? The fact is, the insignificant man with the splendid wife was a very
mysterious personage, and it is the habit of the police to imagine that mystery
always hides either the conspirator, the adventurer, or the charlatan. The
conclusion to which the Prefect had come in regard to M. de Lassa was

64 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

that he was an adventurer and
charlatan too. Certainly a successful one, then, for he was singularly
unobtrusive and had in no way trumpeted the wonders which it was his mission to
perform, yet in a few weeks after he had established himself in Paris the salon
of M. de Lassa was the rage, and the number of persons who paid the fee of 100
francs for a single peep into his magic crystal, and a single message by his
spiritual telegraph, was really astonishing. The secret of this was that M. de
Lassa was a conjurer and deceiver, whose pretensions were omniscient and whose
predictions always came true.

Delessert did not find it very
difficult to get an introduction and admission to De Lassa’s salon. The
receptions occurred every other day— two hours in the forenoon, three hours in
the evening. It was evening when Inspector Delessert called in his assumed
character of M. Flabry, virtuoso in jewels and a convert to Spiritualism. He
found the handsome parlours brilliantly lighted, and a charming assemblage
gathered of well-pleased guests, who did not at all seem to have come to learn
their fortunes or fates, while contributing to the income of their host, but
rather to be there out of complaisance to his virtues and gifts.

Mme. de Lassa performed upon
the piano or conversed from group to group in a way that seemed to be
delightful, while M. de Lassa walked about or sat in his insignificant,
unconcerned way, saying a word now and then, but seeming to shun everything that
was conspicuous. Servants handed about refreshments, ices, cordials, wines, etc.
and Delessert could have fancied himself to have dropped in upon a quite modest
evening entertainment, altogether en regle, but for one or two noticeable
circumstances which his observant eyes quickly took in.

Except when their host or
hostess was within hearing the guests conversed together in low tones, rather
mysteriously, and with not quite so much laughter as is usual on such occasions.
At intervals a very tall and dignified footman would come to a guest, and, with
a profound bow, present him a card on a silver salver. The guest would then go
out, preceded by the solemn servant, but when he or she returned to the
salon—some did not return at all—they invariably wore a dazed or puzzled look,
were confused, astonished, frightened, or amused. All this was so unmistakably
genuine, and De Lassa and his wife seemed so unconcerned amidst it all, not to
say distinct from it all, that Delessert could not avoid being forcibly struck
and considerably puzzled.

Two or three little incidents,
which came under Delessert’s own

65 ————————————————————AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

immediate observation, will
suffice to make plain the character of the impressions made upon those present.
A couple of gentlemen, both young, both of good social condition, and evidently
very intimate friends, were conversing together and tutoying one another at a
great rate, when the dignified footman summoned Alphonse. He laughed gaily,
“Tarry a moment, cher Auguste,” said he, “and thou shalt know all the
particulars of this wonderful fortune!” “En bien!” A minute had scarcely elapsed
when Alphonse returned to the salon. His face was white and bore an appearance
of concentrated rage that was frightful to witness. He came straight to Auguste,
his eyes flashing, and bending his face toward his friend, who changed colour
and recoiled, he hissed out: “Monsieur Lefèbure, vous êles Un láche ! ” Very
well, Monsieur Meuner,” responded Auguste, in the same low tone, “tomorrow
morning at six o’clock!” “It is settled, false friend, execrable traitor! A la
mort!” rejoined Alphonse, walking off. “Cela va sans dire!” muttered Auguste,
going towards the hat-room.

A diplomatist of distinction,
representative at Paris of a neighbouring state, an elderly gentleman of superb
aplomb and most commanding appearance, was summoned to the oracle by the bowing
footman. After being absent about five minutes he returned, and immediately made
his way through the press to M. de Lassa, who was standing not far from the
fireplace, with his hands in his pockets and a look of utmost indifference upon
his face. Delessert standing near, watched the interview with eager interest.

“I am exceedingly sorry,” said
General Von , “to have to absent myself so soon from your interesting salon, M.
de Lassa, but the result of my séance convinces me that my dispatches have been
tampered with.” “I am sorry,” responded M. de Lassa, with an air of languid but
courteous interest; “I hope you may be able to discover which of your servants
has been unfaithful.” “I am going to do that now,” said the General, adding, in
significant tones, “I shall see that both he and his accomplices do not escape
severe punishment.” “That is the only course to pursue, Monsieur le Comte.” The
ambassador stared, bowed, and took his leave with a bewilderment in his face
that was beyond the power of his tact to control.

In the course of the evening
M. de Lassa went carelessly to the piano, and, after some indifferent vague
preluding, played a remarkably effective piece of music, in which the turbulent
life and buoyancy of bacchanalian strains melted gently, almost imperceptibly
away, into a

66 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

sobbing wail of regret, and
languor, and weariness, and despair. It was beautifully rendered, and made a
great impression upon the guests, one of whom, a lady, cried, “How lovely, how
sad! Did you compose that yourself, M. de Lassa?” He looked towards her absently
for an instant, Then replied: “I? Oh, no! That is merely a reminiscence, madame.”
“Do you know who did compose it, M. de Lassa?” enquired a virtuoso present. “I
believe it was originally written by Ptolemy Auletes, the father of Cleopatra,”
said M. de Lassa, in his indifferent musing way; “but not in its present form.
It has been twice re-written to my knowledge; still, the air is substantially
the same.” “From whom did you get it, M. de Lassa, if I may ask?” persisted the
gentleman. “Certainly, certainly! The last time I heard it played was by
Sebastian Bach; but that was Palestrina’s—the present—version. I think I prefer
that of Guido of Arezzo—it is ruder, but has more force. I got the air from
Guido himself.” “You—from— Guido!” cried the astonished gentleman. “Yes,
monsieur,” answered De Lassa, rising from the piano with his usual indifferent
air. “Mon Dieu!” cried the virtuoso, putting his hand to his head after the
manner of Mr. Twemlow, “Mon Dieu! that was in Anno Domni 1022.” “A little
later than that—July, 1031. if I remember rightly,” courteously corrected M. de
Lassa.

At this moment the tall
footman bowed before M. Delessert, and presented the salver containing the card.
Delessert took it and read:

“On vous accorde trente-cinq
secondes, M. Flabry, tout au plus I” Delessert followed; the footman opened the
door of another room and bowed again, signifying that Delessert was to enter.
“Ask no questions,” he said briefly; “Sidi is mute.” Delessert entered the room
and the door closed behind him. It was a small room, with a strong smell of
frankincense pervading it; the walls were covered completely with red hangings
that concealed the windows, and the floor was felted with a thick carpet.
Opposite the door, at the upper end of the room near the ceiling was the face of
a large clock, under it, each lighted by tall wax candles, were two small
tables, containing, the one an apparatus very like the common registering
telegraph instrument, the other a crystal globe about twenty inches in diameter,
set upon an exquisitely wrought tripod of gold and bronze intermingled. By the
side of the door stood a man jet black in colour, wearing a white turban and
burnous, and having a sort of wand of silver in one hand. With the other he took
Delessert by the right arm above the elbow, and led him quickly up the

67 ————————————————————AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

room. He pointed to the clock,
and it struck an alarum; he pointed to the crystal. Delessert bent over, looked
into it, and saw—a facsimile of his own sleeping-room, everything photographed
exactly. Sidi did not give him time to exclaim, but still holding him by the
arm, took him to the other table. The telegraph-like instrument began to click
click. Sidi opened the drawer, drew out a slip of paper, crammed it into
Delessert’s hand, and pointed to the clock, which struck again. The thirty-five
seconds were expired. Sidi, still retaining hold of Delessert’s arm, pointed to
the door and led him towards it. The door opened, Sidi pushed him out, the door
closed, the tall footman stood there bowing—the interview with the oracle is
over. Delessert glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. It was a printed
scrap, capital letters, and read simply: “To M. Paul Delessert: The policeman is
always welcome, the spy is always in danger!”

Delessert was dumbfounded a
moment to find his disguise detected, but the words of the tall footman, “This
way if you please, M. Flabry,” brought him to his senses. Setting his lips, he
returned to the salon, and without delay sought M. de Lassa. “Do you know the
contents of this?” asked he, showing the message. “I know everything, M.
Delessert,” answered De Lassa, in his careless way. “Then perhaps you are aware
that I mean to expose a charlatan, and unmask a hypocrite, or perish in the
attempt?” said Delessert. “Cela rn’est egal, monsieur,” replied De Lassa. “You
accept my challenge then?” “Oh! it is a defiance, then?” replied De Lassa,
letting his eye rest a moment upon Delessert, “mais oui, je l’accepte!” And
thereupon Delessert departed.

Delessert now set to work,
aided by all the forces the Prefect of Police could bring to bear, to detect and
expose this consummate sorcerer, whom the ruder processes of our ancestors would
easily have disposed of—by combustion. Persistent enquiry satisfied Delessert
that the man was neither a Hungarian nor was named De Lassa; that no matter how
far back his power of “reminiscence” might extend, in his present and immediate
form he had been born in this unregenerate world in the toy-making city of
Nuremburg; that he was noted in boyhood for his great turn for ingenious
manufactures, but was very wild, and a mauvais sujet. In his sixteenth year he
escaped to Geneva and apprenticed himself to a maker of watches and instruments.
Here he had been seen by the celebrated Robert Houdin, the prestidigitateur. Houdin recognizing the lad’s talents, and being himself a maker of ingenious
automata, had taken him off to Paris and employed him in

68 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

his own workshops, as well as
for an assistant in the public performances of his amusing and curious diablerie.
After staying with Houdin some years, Pflock Haslich (which was De Lassa’s right
name) had gone East in the suite of a Turkish Pasha, and after many years’
roving, in lands where he could not be traced under a cloud of pseudonyms, had
finally turned up in Venice, and come thence to Paris.

Delessert next turned his
attention to Mme. de Lassa. It was more difficult to get a clue by means of
which to know her past life; but it was necessary in order to understand enough
about Haslich. At last, through an accident, it became probable that Mme. Aimee
was identical with a certain Mme. Schlaff, who had been rather conspicuous
among the demi-monde of Buda. Delessert posted off to that ancient city, and
thence went into the wilds of Transylvania to Mengyco. On his return as soon as
he reached the telegraph and civilization, he telegraphed the Prefect from
Kardszag: “Don't lose sight of my man, nor let him leave Paris. I will run him
in for you two days after I get back.”

It happened that on the day of
Delessert’s return to Paris the Prefect was absent, being with the Emperor at
Cherbourg. He came back on the fourth day, just twenty-four hours after the
announcement of Delessert’s death. That happened, as near as could be gathered,
in this wise: The night after Delessert’s return he was present at De Lassa’s
salon with a ticket of admittance to a séance. He was very completely disguised
as a decrepit old man, and fancied that it was impossible for any one to detect
him. Nevertheless, when he was taken into the room, and looked into the crystal,
he was utterly horror stricken to see there a picture of himself, lying face
down and senseless upon the side-walk of a street; and the message he received
read thus:

“What you have seen will be,
Delessert, in three days. Prepare!” The detective, unspeakably shocked, retired
from the house at once and sought his own lodgings.

In the morning he came to the
office in a state of extreme dejection. He was completely unnerved. In relating
to a brother inspector what had occurred, he said: “That man can do what he
promises, I am doomed!”

He said that he thought he
could make a complete case out against Haslich alias De Lassa, but could not do
so without seeing the Prefect and getting instructions. He would tell nothing in
regard to his discoveries in Buda and in Transylvania—said he was not at
liberty to do so—and repeatedly exclaimed: “Oh! if M. le Préfet were only here!”

69
————————————————————AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY.

He was told to go to the
Prefect at Cherbourg, but refused upon the ground that his presence was needed
in Paris. He time and again averred his conviction that he was a doomed man, and
showed himself both vacillating and irresolute in his conduct, and extremely
nervous. He was told that he was perfectly safe, since De Lassa and all his
household were under constant surveillance; to which he replied, “You do not
know the man.” An inspector was detailed to accompany Delessert, never to lose
sight of him night and day, and guard him carefully; and proper precautions were
taken in regard to his food and drink, while the guards watching De Lassa were
doubled.

On the morning of the third
day, Delessert, who had been staying chiefly indoors, avowed his determination
to go at once and telegraph to M. le Prefet to return immediately. With this
intention he and his brother officer started out. Just as they got to the corner
of the Rue de Lanery and the Boulevard, Delessert stopped suddenly and put his
hand to his forehead.

“My God!” he cried, “the
crystal! the picture!” and fell prone upon his face, insensible. He was taken at
once to a hospital, but only lingered a few hours, never regaining his
consciousness. Under express instruction from the authorities, a most careful,
minute, and thorough autopsy was made of Delessert’s body by several distinguished surgeons, whose unanimous opinion was, that the cause of his death was
apoplexy, due to fatigue and nervous excitement.

As soon as Delessert was sent
to the hospital, his brother inspector hurried to the Central Office, and De
Lassa, together with his wife and everyone connected with the establishment,
were at once arrested. D Lassa smiled contemptuously as they took him away. “I
knew you were coming; I prepared for it; you will be glad to release me again.”

It was quite true that De
Lassa had prepared for them. When the house was searched it was found that every
paper had been burned, the crystal globe was destroyed, and in the room of the
seances was a great heap of delicate machinery broken into indistinguishable
bits. “That cost me 200,000 francs,” said De Lassa, pointing to the pile, “but
it has been a good investment.” The walls and floors were ripped out in several
places, and the damage to the property was considerable. In prison neither De
Lassa nor his associates made any revelations. The notion that they had
something to do with Delessert’s death was quickly dispelled, in a legal point
of view, and all the party but De Lassa were released. He was still detained in
prison, upon one pretext

70 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

or another, when one morning
he was found hanging by a silk sash to the cornice of the room where he was
confined—dead. The night before, it was afterwards discovered, Madame de Lassa
had eloped with a tall footman, taking the Nubian Sidi with them. De Lassa’s
secrets died with him.

—————

“It is an interesting story,
that article of yours in to-day’s Scientist. But is it a record of facts, or a
tissue of the imagination? If true, why not state the source of it, in other
words, specify your authority for it.”

The above is not signed, but
we would take the opportunity to say that the story, “An Unsolved Mystery,” was
published because we considered the main points of the narrative—the prophecies,
and the singular death of the officer—to be psychic phenomena, that have been,
and can be, again produced. Why quote “authorities”? The Scriptures tell us of
the death of Ananias, under the stern rebuke from Peter; here we have a
phenomenon of a similar nature. Ananias is supposed to have suffered instant
death from fear. Few can realize this power governed by spiritual laws, but
those who have trod the boundary line and know some few of the things that can
he done, will see no great mystery in this, nor in the story published last
week. We are not speaking in mystical tones. Ask the powerful mesmerist if there
is danger that the subject may pass out of his control?—if he could will the
spirit out, never to return? It is capable of demonstration that the mesmerist
can act on a subject at a distance of many miles; and it is no less certain that
the majority of mesmerists know little or nothing of the laws that govern their
powers.

It may be a pleasant dream to
attempt to conceive of the beauties of the spirit-world; but the time can be
spent more profitably in a study of the spirit itself, and it is not necessary
that the subject for study should be in the spirit-world.

SPIRITUALISM IN RUSSIA—————

To the Editor of “ The
Spiritual Scientist.”

DEAR SIR,—In advices just
received from St. Petersburg I am requested to translate and forward to The
Scientist for publication the protest of the Hon. Alexander Aksakoff, Imperial
Counsellor of State, against the course of the professors of the University
respecting the Spiritualistic investigation. The document appears, in Russian,
in the Vedomostji, the official journal of St. Petersburg.

This generous, high-minded,
courageous gentleman has done the possible, and even the impossible, in order to
open the spiritual eyes of those incurable moles who fear the daylight of truth
as the burglar fears the policeman’s bull’s-eye.

The heartfelt thanks and
gratitude of every Spiritualist ought to be forwarded to this noble defender of
the cause, who regretted neither his time, trouble nor money to help the
propagation of the truth.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, April 19th, 1876.*—————

* See Appendix, “A. Aksakoff’s
Protest.”

SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRITUALISTS—————

[From The Spiritual Scientist,
Jan. 6th, 1876.]

DEAR SIR,—For the last three
months one has hardly been able to open a number of The Banner or the other
papers, without finding one or more proofs of the fecundity of the human
imagination in the condition of hallucination. The Spiritualist camp is in an
uproar, and the clans are gathering to fight imaginary foes. The tocsin is
sounded; danger signals shoot, like flaming rockets, across the hitherto serene
sky, and warning cries are uttered by vigilant sentries posted at the four
corners of the “angel-girt world.” The reverberations of this din resound even
in the daily press. One would think that the Day of Judgment had come for
American Spiritualism.

Why all this disturbance?
Simply because two humble individuals have spoken a few wholesome truths. If the
grand beast of the Apocalypse with its seven heads and the word “Blasphemy”
written upon each, had appeared in heaven, there would hardly have been seen so
much commotion there, as this; and there seems to be a concerted effort to cast
out Col. Olcott and myself (coupled like a pair of Hermetic Siamese twins) as
ominous to the superstitious as a comet with a fiery tail, and the precursor of
war, plagues and other calamities. They seem to think that if they do not crush
us, we will destroy Spiritualism.

I have no time to waste, and
what I now write is not intended for the benefit of such persons as these—whose
soap-bubbles, however pretty, are sure to burst of themselves—but to set myself
right with many most estimable Spiritualists for whom I feel a sincere regard.

If the spiritual press of
America were conducted upon a principle of doing even justice to all, I would
send your contemporaries copies of this letter, but their course in the past has
made me—whether rightly or not—feel as if no redress could be had outside of
your columns. I shall be only too glad if their treatment, in this case, gives
me cause to change my opinion that they, and their slandering theorists, are
inspired

73 ——————————————————SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRITUALISTS.

by the biblical devils who
left Mary Magdalene and returned to the land of the “Sweet Bye-and-Bye.”

To begin, I wish to unhook my
name from that of Col. Olcott, if you please, and declare that, as he is not
responsible for my views or actions, neither am I for his. He is bold enough and
strong enough to defend himself under all circumstances, and has never allowed
his adversaries to strike without knocking out two teeth to their one. If our
views on Spiritualism are in some degree identical, and our work in the
Theosophical Society pursued in common, we are, notwithstanding, two very
distinct entities and mean to remain such. I highly esteem Col. Olcott, as
everyone does who knows him. He is a gentle man; but what is more in my eyes,
he is an honest and true man, and an unselfish Spiritualist, in the proper sense
of that word. If he now sees Spiritualism in another light than orthodox
Spiritualists would prefer, they themselves are only to blame. He strikes at the
rotten places of their philosophy, and they do all they can to cover up the
ulcers instead of trying to cure them. He is one of the truest and most
unselfish friends that the cause has to-day in America, and yet he is treated
with an intolerance that could hardly be expected of any body above the level of
the rabid Moodys and Sankeys. Surely, facts speak for themselves; and a faith so
pure, angelic and unadulterated as American Spiritualism is claimed to be, can
have nothing to fear from heresiarchs. A house built on the rock stands unshaken
by any storm. If the New Lutheran Church can prove all its “controls, guides and
visitors from behind the shining river” to be disembodied spirits, why all this
row? That’s just where the trouble lies; they cannot prove it. They have tasted
these fruits of Paradise, and while finding some of them sweet and refreshing
because gathered and brought by real angel friends, so many others have proved
sour and rotten at the core, that to escape an incurable dyspepsia, many of the
best and most sincere Spiritualists have left the communion without asking for a
letter of dismissal.

This is not Spiritualism; it
is, as I say, a New Lutheran Church, and really, though the late oracle of The
Banner of Light was evidently a pure and true woman—for the breath of calumny,
this raging demon of America, has never been able to soil her reputation—and
though certainly she was a wonderful medium, still I don’t see why a
Spiritualist should be ostracized, only because after having given up St. Paul,
he or she does not strictly adhere to the doctrines of St. Conant.

74 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

The last number of
The Banner
contained a letter from a Mr. Saxon, criticizing some expressions in a recent
letter of Col. Olcott to the New, York Sun, in defence of the Eddys. The only
part which concerned me is this:

Surely some magician, with his
or her Kabalistic “Presto! Change!” has worked sudden and singular revolutions
in the mind of this disciple of Occultism, this gentleman who “is” and “is not”
a Spiritualist.

As I am the only Kabalist in
America, I cannot be mistaken as to the author’s meaning; so I cheerfully pick
up the glove. While I am not responsible for the changes in the barometer of
Col. Olcott’s spirituality (which I notice usually presage a storm), I am for
the following facts: Since I left Chittenden, I have constantly and fearlessly
maintained against everyone, beginning with Dr. Beard, that their apparitions
are genuine and powerful. Whether they are “spirits of hell or goblins damned”
is a question quite separate from that of their mediumship. Col. Olcott will not
deny that when we met at Chittenden for the first time, and afterwards—and that
more than once—when he expressed suspicions about the genuineness of Mayflower
and George Dix, the spirits of Horatio’s dark séances, I insisted that, so far
as I could judge, they were genuine phenomena. He will also no doubt admit,
since he is an eminently truthful man, that when the ungrateful behaviour of the
Eddys—toward whom every visitor at the homestead will testify that he was kinder
than a brother—had made him ready to express his indignation, I interfered on
their behalf, and begged that he would never confound mediums with other people
as to their responsibility. Mediums have tried to shake my opinions of the Eddy
boys, offering in two cases that I can recall to go to Chittenden with me and
expose the fraud. I acted the same with them that I did with the Colonel.
Mediums have tried likewise to convince me that Mr. Crookes’ Katie King was but
Miss F. Cooke walking about, while a wax bust, fabricated in her likeness and
covered with her clothes, lay in the cabinet representing her as entranced.
Other mediums, regarding me as a fanatical Spiritualist, who would even be
ready to connive at fraud rather than see the cause hurt by an exposure, have
let, or pretended to let, me into the secrets of the mediumship of their fellow
mediums, and sometimes incautiously into their own.

My experience shows that the
worst enemies of mediums are mediums. Not content with slandering each other,
they assail and. traduce their warmest and most unselfish friends.

75 ——————————————————SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRITUALISTS.

Whatever objection anyone may
have to me on account of country, religion, occult study, rudeness of speech,
cigarette-smoking, or any other peculiarity, my record in connection with
Spiritualism for long years does not show me as making money by it, or gaining
any other advantage, direct or indirect. On the contrary, those who have met me
in all parts of the world (which I have circumnavigated three times), will
testify that I have given thousands of dollars, imperilled my life, defied the
Catholic Church—where it required more courage to do so than the Spiritualists
seem to show about encountering elementaries—and in camp and court, on the sea,
in the desert, in civilized and savage countries, I have been from first to last
the friend and champion of mediums. I have done more. I have often taken the
last dollar out of my pocket, and even necessary clothes off my back, to relieve
their necessities.

And how do you think I have
been rewarded? By honours, emoluments, and social position? Have I charged a
fee for imparting to the public or individuals what little knowledge I have
gathered in my travels and studies? Let those who have patronized our principal
mediums answer.

I have been slandered in the
most shameful way, and the most unblushing lies circulated about my character
and antecedents by the very mediums whom I have been defending at the risk of
being taken for their confederate, when their tricks have been detected. What
has happened in American cities is no worse nor different from what has befallen
me in Europe, Asia and Africa. I have been injured temporarily in the eyes of
good and pure men and women by the libels of mediums whom I never saw, and who
never were in the same city with me at the same time; of mediums who made me the
heroine of shameful histories whose action was alleged to have occurred when I
was in another part of the world, far away from the face of a white man.
Ingratitude and injustice have been my portion since I had first to do with
spiritual mediums. I have met here with a few exceptions, but very, very few.

Now, what do you suppose has
sustained me throughout? Do you imagine that I could not see the disgusting
frauds mixed up with the most divine genuine manifestations? Could I, having
nothing to gain in money, power or any other consideration, have been content to
pass through all these dangers, suffer all this abuse, and receive all these
injurious insults, if I saw nothing in Spiritualism but what these critics

76 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

of Col. Olcott and myself can
see? Would the prospect of an eternity, passed in the angel-girt world, in
company with unwashed Indian guides and military controls, with Aunt Sallies
and Prof. Websters, have been inducement enough? No; I would prefer annihilation
to such a prospect. It was because I knew that through the same golden gates
which swung open to admit the elementary and those unprogressed human spirits
who are worse, if anything, than they, have often passed the real and purified
forms of the departed and blessed ones. Because, knowing the nature of these
spirits and the laws of mediumistic control, I have never been willing to hold
my calumniators responsible for the great evil they did, when they were often
simply the unfortunate victims of obsession by unprogressed spirits. Who can
blame me for not wishing to associate with or receive instruction from spirits
who, if not far worse, were no better nor wiser than I? Is a man entitled to
respect and veneration simply because his body is rotting under ground, like
that of a dog? To me the grand object of my life was attained and the
immortality of our spirit demonstrated. Why should I turn necromancer and evoke
the dead, who could neither teach me nor make me better than I was? It is a more
dangerous thing to play with the mysteries of life and death than most Spiritualists imagine.

Let them thank God for the
great proof of immortality afforded them in this century of unbelief and
materialism; and, if divine Providence has put them on the right path, let them
pursue it by all means, but not stop to pass their time in dangerous talk
indiscriminately with every one from the other side. The land of spirits, the
Summer Land, as they call it here, is a terra incognita; no believer will deny
it; it is vastly more unknown to every Spiritualist, as regards its various
inhabitants, than a trackless virgin forest of Central Africa. And who can blame
the pioneer settler if he hesitates to open his door to a knock, before assuring
himself whether the visitor be man or beast?

Thus, just because of all that
I have said above I proclaim myself a true Spiritualist, because my belief is
built upon a firm ground, and that no exposure of mediums, no social scandal
affecting them or others, no materialistic deductions of exact science, or
sneers and denunciations of scientists, can shake it. The truth is coming slowly
to light and I shall do my best to hasten its advent. I will breast the current
of popular prejudice and ignorance. I am prepared to endure

77 ———————————————————SPIRITUALISM AND
SPIRITUALISTS.

slander, foul insinuations and
insult in the future as I have in the past. Already one spiritual editor, to
most effectually demonstrate his spirituality, has called me a witch. I have
survived, and hope to do so if two or two-score more should do the same; but
whether I ride the air to attend my Sabbath or not, one thing is certain: I
will not ruin myself to buy broomsticks upon which to chase after every lie set
afloat by editors or mediums.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

WHAT IS OCCULTISM?—————

[From The Spiritual Scientist.]

I BELIEVE
Occultism to be
essentially a reincarnation of ancient paganism, a revivification of the
Pythagorean philosophy; not the senseless ceremonies and spiritless forms of
those ancient religions, but the Spirit of the Truth which animated those grand
old systems which held the world spell-bound in awe and reverence long after the
spirit had departed, and nothing was left but the dead, decaying body.

Occultism asserts the eternal
individuality of the soul, the imperishable force which is the cause and
sustaining power of all organization, that death is only the casting off of a
worn-out garment in order to procure a new and better one.

So death, so-called, can but
the form deface,
The immortal soul flies out in empty space,
To seek her fortune
in another place.

Occultism, in its efforts to
penetrate the arcana of dynamic forces and primordial power, sees in all things
a unity, an unbroken chain extending from the lowest organic form to the
highest, and concludes that this unity is based upon a uniformly ascending scale
of organic forms of being, the Jacob’s ladder of spiritual organic experience,
up which every soul must travel before it can again sing praises before the face
of its Father. It perceives a duality in all things, a physical and spiritual
nature, closely interwoven in each other’s embrace, interdependent upon each
other, and yet independent of each other. And as there is in spirit-life a
central individuality, the soul, so there is in the physical, the atom, each
eternal, unchangeable and self-existent. These centres, physical and spiritual,
are surrounded by their own respective atmospheres, the intersphering of which
results in aggregation and organization. This idea is not limited to
terrestrial life, but is extended to worlds and systems of worlds.

Physical existence is
subservient to the spiritual, and all physical

79 ————————————————————WHAT IS OCCULTISM?

improvement and progress are
only the auxiliaries of spiritual progress, without which there could be no
physical progress. Physical organic progress is effected through hereditary
transmission; spiritual organic progress by transmigration.

Occultism has divided
spiritual progress into three divisions—the elementary, which corresponds with
the lower organizations; the astral, which relates to the human; and the
celestial, which is divine. “Elementary spirits,” whether they belong to
“earth, water, air or fire,” are spirits not yet human, but attracted to the
human by certain congenialities. As many physical diseases are due to the
presence of parasites, attracted or produced by uncleanness and other causes, so
parasitic spirits are attracted by immorality or spiritual uncleanness, thereby
inducing spiritual diseases and consequent physical ailments. They who live on
the animal plane must attract spirits of that plane, who seek for borrowed
embodiments where the most congeniality exists in the highest form.

Thus the ancient doctrine of
obsession challenges recognition, and the exorcism of devils is as legitimate as
the expelling of a tape-worm, or the curing of the itch. It was also believed
that these spiritual beings sustained their spiritual existence by certain
emanations from physical bodies, especially when newly slain; thus in
sacrificial offerings the priests received the physical part, and the Gods the
spiritual, they being content with a “sweet-smelling savour.” It was further
thought that wars were instigated by these demons, so that they might feast on
the slain.

But vegetable food also held a
place in spiritual estimation, for incense and fumigations were powerful
instruments in the hands of the expert magician.

Above the elementary spheres
were the seven planetary spheres, and as the elementary spheres were the means
of progress for the lower animals, so were the planetary spheres the means of
progress for spirits advanced from the elementary—for human spirits. The human
spirit at death went to its associative star, till ready for a new incarnation,
and its birth partook of the nature of the planet whence it came, and whose rays
illumined the ascendant—the central idea of astrology. When the lessons of a
planetary sphere were fully mastered, the spirit rose to the next sphere to
proceed as before. The character of these spheres corresponded to the “seven
ages of man.” But not always did the spirit return to the astral spheres.
Suicides; those from whom life had been

80 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

suddenly taken before fully
ripe; those whose affections were inordinately attached to earthly things,
etc., were held to the earth till certain conditions were fulfilled, and some
whose lives had fitted them for such disposal were remanded to the elementary
spheres, to be incarnated as lower animals, corresponding to the nature of their
lives. Such were the perturbed spirits who sometimes disturbed the peace of
sensitive mortals in the days gone by—perhaps now.

Transcending the planetary
spheres were the three divine spheres where the process of apotheosis took
place, where the spirit progressed till it reached the fulness of the Godhead
bodily. From these spheres were appointed the Guardians of the inferior spheres,
the Messengers of God, ministering spirits, sent to minister to them who shall
receive the inheritance of salvation.

Such is a brief outline of
spiritual Occult philosophy; it may seem to be inconsistent with the ideas of
modern Spiritualism, yet even Spiritualism has not altogether lost sight of the
seven spheres and other peculiarities of the ancient astro-spiritual faith; and
as knowledge is acquired and experience gained, a better understanding of both
ancient and modern mysticism will bring them nearer together and show a consistency and mutual agreement which has never
been disturbed—only obscured—by
human ignorance and presumption.

But Occultism has a physical
aspect which I cannot afford to pass by. Man is a fourfold being.

Four things of man there are:
spirit, soul, ghost, flesh;
Four places these four keep
and do possess.
The earth covers flesh, the
ghost hovers o’er the grave,
Orcus hath the soul, the stars
the spirit crave.

When the spirit leaves the
body, and is properly prepared for the stellar spheres, these are retained in
the mortal remains; and the shade, which is no part of the spirit or the true
man or woman, may still counterfeit them, make revelations of the past, in fact
reveal more of its sensual history, and prove sensual identity better than the
spirit itself could do, seeing it knows only spiritual things. The sciomancy of
the past bears the same relation to modern psychometry that ancient Magic does
to modern Spiritualism. Thus in haunted houses, in graveyards and places where
deeds of violence have occurred, sensitives see the drama reacted which
transpired long ago, the spirit being no accessory thereto.

The spirit cannot even
communicate unless through the interblend-

81 ————————————————————WHAT IS OCCULTISM?

ing of physical and spiritual
auræ and only by coming en rapport with physical things can it know anything
of them; and thus mediums are as necessary on the other side as on this; through
which mediums, Guardian Spirits, we may gain a nearer apprehension of spiritual
truths, if we live for them.

BUDDHA 0F CALIFORNIA.*—————

* We cannot say positively that this is
H. P. B. ‘s, but it is either written by her, or under her inspiration.

A WARNING TO MEDIUMS—————

[From The Banner of Light, May
13th1876.]

DEAR SIR,—I take the earliest
opportunity to warn mediums generally—but particularly American mediums—that a
plot against the cause has been hatched in St. Petersburg. The particulars have
just been received by tile from one of my foreign correspondents, and may be
relied upon as authentic.

It is now commonly known that
Prof. Wagner, the geologist, has boldly come out as a champion for mediumistic
phenomena. Since he witnessed the wonderful manifestations of Bredif, the French
medium, he has issued several pamphlets, reviewed at great length in Col.
Olcott’s People from the Other World, and excited and defied the anger of all
the scientific pyschophobists of the Imperial University. Fancy a herd of mad
bulls rushing at the red flag of a picador, and you will have some idea of the
effect of Wagner’s Olcott-pamphlet upon his colleagues.

Chief among them is the
chairman of the scientific Commission which has just exploded with a report of
what they did not see at séances never held! Goaded to fury by the defence of
Spiritualism, which they had intended to quietly butcher, this individual
suddenly took the determination to come to America, and is now probably on his
way. Like a Samson of science, he expects to tie our foxes of mediums together
by the tails, set fire to them, and turn them into the corn of those
Philistines, Wagner and Butlerow.

Let me give mediums a bit of
friendly caution. If this Russian Professor should turn up at a séance, keep a
sharp eye upon him, and let everyone do the same; give him no private séances at
which there is not present at least one truthful and impartial Spiritualist.
Some scientists are not to be trusted. My correspondent writes that the
Professor—
Goes to America to create a great scandal, burst up Spiritualism, and
turn the laugh on P. Wagner, Aksakoff and Butlerow.

83 ————————————————————A WARNING TO MEDIUMS.

The plot is very ingeniously
contrived: he is coming here under the pretext of the Centennial, and will
attract as little attention as possible among the mediums.

But, Mr. Editor, what if he
should meet the fate of Hare and become a Spiritualist! What wailing would there
not be in the Society of Physical Sciences! I shudder at the mortification which
would await my poor countrymen.

But another distinguished
Russian scientist is also coming, for whom I bespeak a very different reception.
Prof. Kittara, the greatest technologist of Russia and a member of the
Emperor’s Privy Council, is really sent by the government to the Centennial. He
is deeply interested in Spiritualism, very anxious to investigate it, and will
bring the proper credentials from Mr. Aksakoff. The latter gentleman writes me
that every civility and attention should be shown Prof. Kittara, as his report,
if favourable, will have a tremendous influence upon public opinion.

The unfairness of the
University Commission has, it seems, produced a reaction. I translate the
following from a paper which Mr. Aksakoff has sent me, the St. Petersburg Berjeveya
viedomostji (Exchange Reports):

We hear that the Commission
for the investigation of mediumism, which was formed by the Society of Physical
Sciences attached to the University, is preparing to issue a report of its
labours [? !]. It will appear as an appendix to the monthly periodical of the
Chemical and Physical Societies. Meanwhile another Commission is being formed,
but this time its members will not be supplied from the Physical Science
Society, but from the Medical Society. Nevertheless, several members of the
former will be invited to join, as well as the friends of mediumism, and
others who would be able to offer important suggestions pro or con. We hear
that the formation of this new Commission is warmly advocated, its necessity
having been shown in the breach of faith by the Physical Science Society, its
failure to hold the promised forty seances, its premature adoption of unfair
conclusions, and the strong prejudices of the members.

Let us hope that this new
organization may prove more honourable than its predecessor (peace to its
ashes!).

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

(NEW) YORK AGAINST LANKESTER

A NEW WAR OF THE ROSES.

[From The Banner of Light, Oct.
24th, 1876]

DESPITE the constant
recurrence of new discoveries by modern men of science, an exaggerated respect
for authority and an established routine among the educated class retard the
progress of true knowledge. Facts which, if observed, tested, classified and
appreciated, would be of inestimable importance to science, are summarily cast
into the despised limbo of supernaturalism. To these conservatives the
experience of the past serves neither as an example nor a warning. The
overturning of a thousand cherished theories finds our modern philosopher as
unprepared for each new scientific revelation as though his predecessor had been
infallible from time immemorial.

The protoplasmist should, at
least, in modesty remember that his past is one vast cemetery of dead theories;
a desolate potter’s field wherein exploded hypotheses lie, in ignoble oblivion,
like so many executed malefactors, whose names cannot be pronounced by the next
of kin without a blush.

The nineteenth century is
essentially the age of demolition. True, science takes just pride in many
revolutionary discoveries and claims to have immortalized the epoch by forcing
from Dame Nature some of her most important secrets. But for every inch she
illumines of the narrow and circular path within whose limits she has hitherto
trodden, what unexplored boundless stretches have been left behind? The worst is
that science has not simply withheld her light from these regions that seem dark
(but are not), but her votaries try their best to quench the lights of other
people under the pretext that they are not authorities, and their friendly
beacons are but “will-o’-the-wisps.” Prejudice and preconceived ideas have
entered the public brain, and, cancer-like, are eating it to the core.
Spiritualism—or, if some for whom the word has become so unpopular prefer it,
the universe of

85 ———————————————————(NEW) YORK AGAINST LANKESTER.

spirit—is left to fight out
its battle with the world of matter, and the crisis is at hand.

Half-thinkers, and aping,
would-be philosophers—in short, that class which is unable to penetrate events
any deeper than their crust, and which measures every clay’s occurrences by its
present aspect, unmindful of the past and careless of the future—heartily
rejoice over the latest rebuff given to phenomenalism in the Lankester-Donkin
offensive and defensive alliance, and the pretended exposure of Slade. In this
hour of would—be Lancastrian triumph, a change should be made in English
heraldic crests. The Lancasters were always given to creating dissensions and
provoking strife among peaceable folk. From ancient York the War of the Roses is
now transferred to Middle sex, and Lankester (whose name is a corruption),
instead of uniting himself with the hereditary foe, has joined his idols with
those of Donkin (whose name is evidently also a corruption). As the hero of the
hour is not a knight, but a zoologist deeply versed in the science to which lie
devotes Ins talents, why not compliment his ally by quartering the red rose of
Lancaster with the downy thistle so delicately appreciated by a certain
prophetic quadruped, who seeks for it by the wayside? Really, Mr. Editor, when
Mr. Lankester tells us that all those who believe in Dr. Slade’s phenomena ‘are
lost to reason,” we must accord to biblical animals a decided precedence over
modern ones. The ass of Balaam had at least the faculty of perceiving spirits,
while some of those who bray in our academies and hospitals show no evidence of
its possession. Sad degeneration of species!

Such persons as these bound
all spiritual phenomena in Nature by the fortunes and mishaps of mediums; each
new favourite, they think, must of necessity pull down in his fall an
unscientific hypothetical “Unseen Universe,” as the tumbling red dragon of the
Apocalypse drew with his tail the third part of the stars of heaven. Poor blind
moles! They perceive not that by inveighing against the “craze” of such
phenomenalists as Wallace, Crookes, Wagner and Thury, they only help the spread
of true Spiritualism. We millions of lunatics really ought to address a vote of
thanks to the “dishevelled” Beards who make supererogatory efforts to appear as
stupid clodpoles to deceive the Eddys, and to Lankesters simulating
“astonishment and intense interest,” the better to cheat Dr. Shade. More than
any advocates of phenomenalism, they bring its marvels into public notice by
their pyrotechnic exposures.

86 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

As one entrusted by the
Russian Committee with the delicate task of selecting a medium for the coming
St. Petersburg experiments, and as an officer of the Theosophical Society, which
put Dr. Slade’s powers to the test in a long series of seances, I pronounce him
not only a genuine medium, but one of the best and least fraudulent mediums ever
developed. From personal experience I can not only testify to the genuineness of
his slate-writing, but also to that of the materializations which occur in his
presence. A shawl thrown over a chair (which I was invited to place wherever I
chose) is all the cabinet he exacts, and his apparitions immediately appear,
and that in gas—light.

No one will charge me with a
superfluous confidence in the personality of material apparitions, or a
superabundance of love for them ; but honour and truth compel me to affirm that
those who appeared to me in Slade’s presence were real phantoms, and not “made
up” confederates or dolls. They were evanescent and filmy, and the only ones I
have seen in America which have reminded me of those that the Adepts of India
evoke. Like the latter, they formed and dissolved before my eyes, their
substance rising mist-like from the floor, and gradually condensing. Their eyes
moved and their lips smiled ; but as they stood near me their forms were so
transparent that through them I could see the objects in the room. These I call
genuine spiritual substances, whereas the opaque ones that I have seen else where were
nothing but animated forms of matter—whatever they be—with sweating hands and a
peculiar odour, which I am not called upon to define at this time.

Everyone knows that Dr. Slade
is not acquainted with foreign languages, and yet at our first séance, three
years ago, on the day after my arrival in New York, where no one knew me, I
received upon his slate a long communication in Russian. I had purposely avoided
giving either to Dr. Slade or his partner, Mr. Simmons, any clue to my nationality, and while, from my accent, they would of course have detected that I was
not an American, they could not possibly have known from what country I came. I
fancy that if Dr. Lankester had allowed Slade to write on both knees and both
elbows successively or simultaneously, the poor man would not have been able to
turn out Russian messages by trick and device.

In reading the accounts in the
London papers, it has struck me as very remarkable that this “vagrant” medium,
after baffling such a host of savants, would have fallen so easy a victim to
the zoölogico-osteological

87 ——————————————————(NEW) YORK AGAINST LANKESTER.

brace of scientific
detectives. Fraud, that neither the “psychic” Sergeant Cox, nor the
“unconsciously cerebrating” Carpenter, nor the wise Wallace, nor the experienced
M.A. (Oxon.), nor the cautious Lord Rayleigh—who, mistrusting his own acuteness,
employed a professional juggler to attend the séance with him—nor Dr. Carter
Blake, nor a host of other competent observers could detect, was seen by the
eagle eyes of the Lankester-Donkin Gemini at a single glance. There has been
nothing like it since Beard, of electro-hay fever and Eddy fame, denounced the
faculty of Yale for a set of asses, because they would not accept his
divinely-inspired revelation of the secret of mind-reading, and pitied the
imbecility of that “amiable idiot,” Col. Olcott, for trusting his own
two—months’ observation of the Eddy phenomena in preference to the electric
doctor’s single séance of an hour.

I am an American citizen in
embryo, Mr. Editor, and I cannot hope that the English magistrates of Bow Street
will listen to a voice that comes from a city proverbially held in small esteem
by British scientists. When Prof. Tyndall asks Prof. Youmans if the New York
carpenters could make him a screen ten feet long for his Cooper Institute
lectures, and whether it would be necessary to send to Boston for a cake of ice
that he wished to use in the experiments; and when Huxley evinces grateful
surprise that a “foreigner” could express him self in your (our) language in
such a way as to be so readily intelligible, “to all appearance,” by a New York
audience, and that those clever chaps—the New York reporters—could report him
despite his accent, neither New York “spooks,” nor I, can hope for a standing in
a London court, when the defendant is prosecuted by English scientists. But,
fortunately for Dr. Slade, British tribunals are not inspired by the Jesuits,
and so Slade may escape the fate of Leymarie. He certainly will, if he is
allowed to summon to the witness-stand his Owasso and other devoted “controls,”
to write their testimony inside a double state, furnished and held by the
magistrate himself. This is Dr. Slade’s golden hour; he will never have so good
a chance to demonstrate the reality of phenomenal manifestations, and make
Spiritualism triumph over scepticism; and we, who know the doctor’s wonderful
powers, are confident that he can do it, if he is assisted by those who in the
past have accomplished so much through his instrumentality.

As I see the issue that has
been raised by Dr. Hallock with Mr. Huxley, it suggests to me the comparison of
two men looking at the same distant object through a telescope. The Doctor,
having taken the usual precautions, brings the object within close range where
it can he studied at one’s leisure; but the naturalist, having forgotten to
remove the cap, sees only the reflection of his own image.

Though the materialists may
find it hard to answer even the brief criticisms of the Doctor, yet it appears
that Mr. Huxley’s New York lectures—as they present themselves to me in their
naked desolation— suggest one paramount idea which Dr. Hallock has not touched
upon. I need scarcely say to you, who must have read the report of these
would-be iconoclastic lectures, that this idea is one of the “false pretences”
of Modern Science. After all the flourish which attended his coming, all the
expectations that had been aroused, all the secret apprehensions of the church
and the anticipated triumph of the materialists, what did he teach us that was
really new or so extremely suggestive? Nothing, positively nothing. Exclude a
sight of his personality, the sound of his well-trained voice, the reflection
of his scientific glory, and the result may be summed up thus: “Cr., Thomas H.
Huxley, L1,000.”

Of him it may be said, as it
has been of other teachers before, that what he said that was new was not true;
and that which was true was not new.

Without going into details,
for the moment, it suffices to say that the materialistic theory of evolution is
far from being demonstrated, while the thought that Mr. Huxley does not
grasp—i.e., the double evolution of spirit and matter—is imparted under the form
of various legends in the oldest parts of the Rig Veda (the Aitareya Brâhmana).
Only these benighted Hindus, it seems, made the trifling improvement over
Modern

89
————————————————————HUXLEY AND SLADE.

Science, of hooking a First
Cause on to the further end of the chain of evolution.

In the
Chaturhotri Mantra (Book V
of the Aitareya Brâhmana) the Goddess Eath (lyam), who is termed the Queen of
the Serpents (Sârpa), for she is the mother of everything that moves (Sârpat),
was in the beginning of time completely bald. She was nothing but one round
head, which was soft to the touch, i.e., “a gelatinous mass.” Being disstressed
at her baldness, she called for help to the great Vâyu, the Lord of the airy
regions; she prayed him to teach her the Mantra (invocation or sacrificial
prayer—a certain part of the Veda), which would confer on her the magical power
of creating things (generation). He complied, and then as soon as the Mantra was
pronounced by her “in the proper metre” she found herself covered with hair
(vegetation). She was now hard to the touch, for the Lord of the air had
breathed upon her—the globe had cooled. She had become of a variegated or motley
appearance, and suddenly acquired the power to produce out of herself every
animate and inanimate form, and to chance one form to another.

Therefore in like manner [ the
sacred book] the man who has such a knowledge [ the Mantras] obtains the
faculty of assuming any shape or form he likes.

It will scarcely be said that
this allegory is capable of more than one interpretation, viz., that the
ancient Hindus, many centuries before the Christian era, taught the
doctrine of evolution. Martin Haug, the Sanskrit scholar, asserts that
the Vedas were already in existence from 2,000 to 2,200 B.C.

Thus, while the theory of
evolution is nothing new, and may be considered a proven fact, the new ideas
forced upon the public by Mr. Huxley are only undemonstrated hypotheses, and as
such liable to be exploded the first fine day upon the discovery of some new
fact. We find no admission of his, however, in Mr. Huxley’s communications to
the public; but the unproved theories are enunciated with as much boldness as
though the were established scientific facts, corroborated by unerring laws of
Nature. Notwithstanding this the world is asked to revere the great
evolutionist, only because he stands under the shadow of a great name.

What is this but one of the
many false pretences of the sciolists? And yet Huxley and his admirers charge the
believers in the evolution of spirit with the same crime of false pretences,
because, forsooth, our theories are as yet undemonstrated. Those who believe in
Slade’s

90 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

spirits-are “lost.to reason,”
while those who can see embryonic man in Huxley’s “gelatinous mass” are accepted
as the progressive minds of the age. Slade is arraigned before the magistrate
for taking $5 from Lankester, while Huxley triumphantly walks away with $5,0OO of
American gold in his pockets, which was paid him for imparting to us the mirific
fact that man evolved from the hind toe of a pedactyl horse!

Now, arguing from the
standpoint of strict justice, in what respect is a materialistic theorist any
better than a spiritualistic one? And in what degree is the evolution of
man—independent of divine and spiritual interference—better proven by the
toe-bone of an extinct horse, than the evolution and survival of the human
spirit by the writing upon a screwed-up slate by some unseen power or powers?
And yet again, the soulless Huxley sails away laden with flowers like a
fashionable corpse, conquering and to conquer in fresh fields of glory, while
the poor medium is hauled before a police magistrate as a “vagrant and a
swindler,” without proof enough to sustain the charge before an unprejudiced
tribunal.

There is good authority for
the statement that psychological science is a debatable land upon which the
modern physiologist hardly dares to venture. I deeply sympathize with the
embarrassed student of the physical side of Nature. We all can readily
understand how disagreeable it must be to a learned theorist, ever aspiring for
the elevation of his hobby to the dignity of an accepted scientific truth,
constantly to receive the lie direct from his remorseless and untiring
antagonist— psychology. To see his cherished materialistic theories become every
day more untenable, until they are reduced to the condition of mummies swathed
in shrouds, self-woven and inscribed with a farrago of pet sophistries, is
indeed hard. And in their self-satisfying logic, these sons of matter reject
every testimony but their own: the divine entity of the Socratic daimonion, the
ghost of Cæsar, and Cicero’s Divinum Quidam, they explain by epilepsy; and the
prophetic oracles of the Jewish Bath-Kol are set down as hereditary hysteria!

And now, supposing the great
protoplasmist to have proved to the general satisfaction that the present horse
is an effect of a gradual development from the Orophippus, or four-toed horse
of the Eocene formation, which, passing further through Miocene and Pliocene
periods, has become the modern honest Equus, does Huxley thereby prove that
man
has also developed from a one-toed human being? For nothing short of that could
demonstrate his theory. To be consistent he must

91 ————————————————————HUXLEY AND SLADE.

show that while the horse was
losing at each successive period a toe, man has in reversed order acquired an
additional one at each new formation; and unless we are shown the fossilized
remains of man in a series of one-, two-, three- and four-toed anthropoid
ape-like beings antecedent to the present perfected Homo, what does Huxley’s
theory amount to? Nobody doubts that everything has evolved out of some thing
prior to itself. But, as it is, he leaves us hopelessly in doubt whether it is
man who is a hipparionic or equine evolution, or the antediluvian Equus that evolved
from the primitive genus Homo!

Thus to apply the argument to
Slade’s case we may say that, whether the messages on his slate indicate an
authorship among the returning spirits of antediluvian monkeys, or the bravos
and Lankestrian ancestors of our day, he is no more guilty of false pretences
than the $5,000 evolutionist. Hypothesis, whether of scientist or medium, is no
false pretence; but unsupported assertion is, when people are charged money
for it.

If, satisfied
with the
osseous fragments of a Hellenized or Latinized skeleton, we admit that there is
a physical evolution, by what logic can we refuse to credit the possibility of
an evolution of spirit? That there are two sides to the question, no one but an
utter psychophobist will deny. It may be argued that even if the Spiritualists
have demonstrated their bare facts, their philosophy is not complete, since it
has missing links. But no more have the evolutionists. They have fossil remains
which prove that once upon a time the ancestors of the modern horse were blessed
with three and even four toes and fingers, the fourth ‘‘answering to the little
finger of the human hand,” and that the Protohippus rejoiced in ‘‘a
fore-arm’’ ; Spiritualists in their turn exhibit entire hands, arms, and even
bodies in support of their theory that the dead still live and revisit us. For
my part I cannot see that the osteologists have the better of them. Both follow
the inductive or purely scientific method, proceeding from particulars to
universals; thus Cuvier, upon finding a small bone, traced around it imaginary
lines until he had built up from his prolific fancy a whole mammoth. The data of
scientists are no more certain than those of Spiritualists; and while the former
have but their modern discoveries upon which to build their theories,
Spiritualists may cite the evidence of a succession of ages, which began long
prior to the advent of Modern Science.

An inductive hypothesis, we
are told, is demonstrated when the facts are shown to be in entire accordance
with it. Thus, if Huxley possesses

92 ————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

conclusive evidence of the
evolution of man in the genealogy of the horse, Spiritualists can equally claim
that proof of the evolution of spirit out of the body is furnished in the
materialized, more or less substantial, limbs that float in the dark shadows of
the cabinet, and often in full light—a phenomenon which has been recognized and
attested by numberless generations of wise men of every country. As to the
pretended superiority of modern over ancient science, we have only the word of
the former for it. This is also an hypothesis; better evidence is required to prove
the fact. We have but to turn to Wendell Phillips’s lecture on the Lost Arts to
have a certain right to doubt the assurance of Modern Science.

Speaking of evidence, it is
strange what different and arbitrary values may be placed upon the testimony of
different men equally trustworthy and well-meaning. Says the parent of
protoplasm:

It is impossible that one’s
practical life should not be more or less influenced by the views which he may
hold as to what has been the past history of things. One of them is human
testimony in its various shapes—all testimony of eye-witnesses, traditional
testimony from the lips of those who have been eye-witnesses, and the testimony
of those who have put their impressions into writing or into print.

On just such testimony, amply
furnished in the Bible (evidence which Mr. Huxley rejects), and in many other
less problematical authors than Moses, among whom may be reckoned generations of
great philosophers, theurgists, and laymen, Spiritualists have a right to base
their fundamental doctrines. Speaking further of the broad distinction to be
drawn between the different kinds of evidence, some being less valuable than
others, because given upon grounds not clear, upon grounds illogically stated and
upon such as do not bear thorough and careful inspection, the same gelatinist
remarks:

For example, if I read in your
history of Tennessee [Ramsays] that one hundred years ago this country was peopled by
wandering savages, my belief in this statement rests upon the conviction that Mr.
Ramsay was actuated by the same sort of motives that men are now,... that he
himself was, like ourselves, not inclined to make false statements. . . . If you
read Cæsar’s Commentaries, wherever he gives an account of his battles with
the Gauls, you place a certain amount of confidence in his statements. You
take his testimony upon this, you feel that Cæsar would
not have made these
statements unless he had believed them to be true.

Profound philosophy! precious
thoughts! gems of condensed, gelatinous truth! long may it stick to the
American mind! Mr. Huxley ought to devote the rest of his days to writing
primers for the feeble minded adults of the United States. But why select Cæsar as
the type

93 ————————————————————HUXLEY AND SLADE.

of the trustworthy witness of
ancient times? And if we must implicitly credit his reports of battles, why not
his profession of faith in augurs, diviners and apparitions?—for in common with
his wife, Calpurnia, he believed in them as firmly as any modern Spiritualist
in his mediums and phenomena. We also feel that no more than Cæsar would such
men as Cicero and Herodotus and Livy and a host of others “have made these false
statements,” or reported such things “unless they believed them to be true.”

It has already been shown that
the doctrine of evolution, as a whole, was taught in the Rig Veda, and I may
also add that it can be found in the most ancient of the books of Hermes. This
is bad enough for the claim to originality set up by our modern scientists, but
what shall be said when we recall the fact that the very pedactyl horse, the
finding of whose footprints has so overjoyed Mr. Huxley, was mentioned by ancient
writers (Herodotus anti Pliny, if I mistake not), and was once outrageously
laughed at by the French Academicians? Let those who wish to verify the fact
read Salverti’s Philosophy of Occult Science, translated by Todd Thompson.

Some day proofs as conclusive
will be discovered of the reliability of the ancient writers as to their
evidence on psychological matters. What Niebuhr, the German materialist, did
with Livy’s History, from which he eliminated every one of the multitude of
facts of phenomenal “Super naturalism,’’ scientists now seem to have tacitly
agreed to do with all the ancient, medæval and modern authors. What they narrate,
that can be used to bolster up the physical part of science, scientists accept
and sometimes coolly appropriate without credit; what supports the
Spiritualistic philosophy they incontinently reject as mythical and contrary to
the order of Nature. In such cases “evidence” and the “testimony of
eye-witnesses” count for nothing. They adopt the contrary course to Lord Verulam,
who, arguing on the properties of amulets and charms, remarks that:

We should not reject all this
kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to superstition depend
on natural causes.

There can be no real
enfranchisement of human thought nor expansion of scientific discovery until
the existence of spirit is recognized, and the double evolution accepted as a
fact. Until then, false theories will always find favour with those who, having
forsaken “the God of their fathers,” vainly strive to find substitutes in
nucleated masses of matter. And of all the sad things to be seen in this era of
“shams,”

94 ——————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

none is more deplorable—though
its futility is often ludicrous—than the conspiracy of certain scientists to
stamp out spirit by their one-sided theory of evolution, and destroy
Spiritualism by arraigning its mediums upon the charge of “false pretences.”

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

CAN THE DOUBLE MURDER?—————

To the Editor of” The Sun.”

SIR,—One morning in 1867
Eastern Europe was startled by news of the most horrifying description. Michael
Obrenovitch, reigning Prince of Serbia, his aunt, the Princess Catherine, or
Katinka, and her daughter had been murdered in broad daylight, near Belgrade,
in their own garden, assassin or assassins remaining unknown. The Prince had
received several bullet-shots and stabs, and his body was actually butchered;
the Princess was killed on the spot, her head smashed, and her young daughter,
though still alive, was not expected to survive. The circumstances are too
recent to have been forgotten, but in that part of the world, at the time, the
case created a delirium of excitement.

In the Austrian dominions and
in those tinder the doubtful protectorate of Turkey, from Bucharest down to
Trieste, no high family felt secure. In those half-Oriental countries every
Montecchi has its Capuletti, and it was rumoured that the bloody deed was
perpetrated by the Prince Kara-Gueorguevitch, or “Tzerno-Gueorgey,” as he is
usually called in those parts. Several persons innocent of the act were, as is
usual in such cases, imprisoned, and the real murderers escaped justice. A young
relative of the victim, greatly beloved by his people, a mere child, taken for
the purpose from a school in Paris, was brought over in ceremony to Belgrade and
proclaimed Hospodar of Serbia. In the turmoil of political excitement the
tragedy of Belgrade was for gotten by all but an old Serbian matron who had been
attached to the Obrenovitch family, and who, like Rachel, would not be comforted
for the death of her children. After the proclamation of the young Obrenovitch,
nephew of the murdered man, she had sold out her property and disappeared; but
not before taking a solemn vow on the tombs of the victims to avenge their
deaths.

The writer of this truthful
narrative had passed a few days at Belgrade, about three months before the
horrid deed was perpetrated,

96 ——————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

and knew the Princess Katinka.
She was a kind, gentle, and lazy creature at home; abroad she seemed a
Parisienne in manners and education. As nearly all the personages who will
figure in this true story are still living, it is but decent that I should
withhold their names, and give only initials.

The old Serbian lady seldom
left her house, going but to see the Princess occasionally. Crouched on a pile
of pillows and carpeting, clad in the picturesque national dress, she looked
like the Cumæan sibyl in her days of calm repose. Strange stories were whispered
about her Occult knowledge, and thrilling accounts circulated some times among
the guests assembled round the fireside of the modest inn. Our fat landlord’s
maiden aunt’s cousin had been troubled for some time past by a wandering
vampire, and had been bled nearly to death by the nocturnal visitor, and while
the efforts and exorcisms of the parish pope had been of no avail, the victim
was luckily delivered by Gospoja P—, who had put to flight the disturbing ghost
by merely shaking her fist at him, and shaming him in his own language. It was
in Belgrade that I learned for the first time this highly-interesting fact in
philology, namely, that spooks have a language of their own. The old lady, whom
I will call Gospoja P was generally attended by another personage destined to be
the principal actress in our tale of horror. It was a young gipsy girl from some
part of Roumania, about fourteen years of age. Where she was born, and who she
was, she seemed to know as little as anyone else. I was told she had been
brought one day by a party of strolling gipsies, and left in the yard of the old
lady, from which moment she became an inmate of the house. She was nicknamed
“the sleeping girl,” as she was said to be gifted with the faculty of apparently
dropping asleep wherever she stood, and speaking her dreams aloud. The girl’s
heathen name was Frosya.

About eighteen months after
the news of the murder had reached Italy, where I was at the tune, I travelled
over the Banat in a small waggon of my own, hiring a horse whenever I needed
one. I met on my way an old Frenchman, a scientist, travelling alone after my
own fashion, but with the difference that while he was a pedestrian, I
dominated the road from the eminence of a throne of dry hay in a jolting waggon.
I discovered him one fine morning slumbering in a wilderness of shrubs and
flowers, and had nearly passed over him, absorbed as I was in the contemplation
of the surrounding glorious scenery. The acquaintance was soon made, no great
ceremony of

97 ——————————————————CAN THE DOUBLE MURDER?

mutual introduction being
needed. I had heard his name mentioned in circles interested in mesmerism, and
knew him to be a powerful adept of the school of Dupotet.

“I have found,” he remarked,
in the course of the conversation after I had made him share my seat of hay,
“one of the most wonderful subjects in this lovely Thebaide. I have an
appointment to-night with the family. They are seeking to unravel the mystery of
a murder by means of the clairvoyance of the girl . . . she is wonderful!”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“A Roumanian gipsy. She was
brought up, it appears, in the family of the Serbian reigning Prince, who reigns
no more, for he was very mysteriously mur— Halloo, take care! Diable, you will
upset us over the precipice!” he hurriedly exclaimed, unceremoniously snatching
from me the reins, and giving the horse a violent pull.

“You do not mean Prince
Obrenovitch?” I asked aghast.

“Yes, I do; and him precisely.
To-night I have to be there, hoping to close a series of seances by finally
developing a most marvellous manifestation of the hidden power of the human
spirit; and you may come with me. I will introduce you; and besides, you can
help me as an interpreter, for they do not speak French.”

As I was pretty sure that if
the somnambule was Frosya, the rest of the family must be Gospoja P—, I readily
accepted. At sunset we were at the foot of the mountain, leading to the old
castle, as the Frenchman called the place. It fully deserved the poetical name
given it. There was a rough bench in
the depths of one of the shadowy retreats, and as we stopped at the entrance of
this poetical place, and the Frenchman was gallantly busying himself with my
horse on the suspicious-looking bridge which led across the water to the
entrance gate, I saw a tall figure slowly rise from the bench and come towards
us.

It was my old friend Gospoja
P—, looking more pale and more mysterious than ever. She exhibited no surprise
at seeing me, but simply greeting me after the Serbian fashion, with a triple
kiss on both cheeks, she took hold of my hand and led me straight to the nest of
ivy. Half reclining on a small carpet spread on the tall grass, with her back
leaning against the wall, I recognized our Frosya.

She was dressed in the
national costume of the Wallachian women, a sort of gauze turban intermingled
with various gilt medals and bands on her head, white shirt with opened sleeves,
and petticoats of varie-

98 ———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

gated colours. Her face looked
deadly pale, her eyes were closed, and her countenance presented that stony,
sphinx-like look which characterizes in such a peculiar way the entranced
clairvoyant somnambule. If it were not for the heaving motion of her chest and
bosom, ornamented by rows of medals and head necklaces which feebly tinkled at
ever breath, one might have thought her dead, so lifeless and corpse-like was
her face. The Frenchman informed me that he had sent her to sleep just as
we were approaching the house, and that she now was as he had left her the
previous night; he then began busying himself with the sujet, as he called
Frosva. Paying no further attention to us, he shook her by the hand, and then
making a few rapid passes stretched out her arm and stiffened it. The arm, as
rigid as iron, remained in that position. He then closed all her fingers but
one—the middle finger—which he caused to point at the evening star, which
twinkled in the deep blue sky. Then he turned round and went over from right to
left, throwing on some of his fluids here, again discharging them at another
place; busying himself with his invisible but potent fluids, like a painter
with his brush when giving the last touches to a picture.

The old lady, who had
silently watched him, with her chin in her hand the while, put her thin,
skeleton—looking hands on his arm and arrested it, as he was preparing himself
to begin the regular mesmeric passes.

‘‘Wait,”
she whispered, ‘‘till the star is set and the ninth hour completed. The Vourdalaki are
hovering round; they may spoil the influence.’’

“What does she say?” enquired
time mesmerizer, annoyed at her interference.

I explained to him that the
old lady feared the pernicious influences of the Vourdalaki.

“Vourdalaki! What’s that—the
Vourdalaki?” exclaimed the French man. “Let us be satisfied with Christian
spirits, if the honour us to-night with a visit, and lose no time for the
Vourdalaki.”

I glanced at the Gospoja. She
had become deathly pale and her brow was sternly knitted over her flashing black
eyes.

“Tell him not to jest at this
hour of the night!” she cried. “He does not know the country. Even this holy
church may fail to protect us once the Vourdalaki are roused. What’s this ?“
pushing with her foot a bundle of herbs the botanizing mesmerizer had laid near
on the

99 ———————————————————CAN THE DOUBI,E MURDER?

grass. She bent over the
collection and anxiously examined the contents of the bundle, after which she
flung the whole into the water.

‘‘It must not be left here,’’
she firmly added; ‘‘these are the St. John’s plants, and they might attract the
wandering ones.’’

Meanwhile the night had come,
and the moon illuminated the land scape with a pale, ghostly light. The nights
in the Banat are nearly as beautiful as in the East, and the Frenchman had to
go on with his experiments in the open air, as the priest of the church had
prohibited such in the tower, which was used as the parsonage, for fear of
filling the holy precincts with the heretical devils of the mesmerizer, which,
the priest remarked, he would be unable to exorcise on account of their being
foreigners.

The old gentleman
had thrown
off his travelling blouse, rolled tip his shirt sleeves, and now, striking a
theatrical attitude, began a regular process of mesmerization.

Under his quivering fingers
the odile fluid actually seemed to flash in the twilight. Frosya was placed
with her figure facing the moon, and every motion of the entranced girl was
discernible as in daylight. In a few minutes large drops of perspiration
appeared on her brow, and slowly rolled down her pale face, glittering in the
moonbeams. Then she moved uneasily about and began chanting a low melody, to the
words of which the Gospoja, anxiously bent over the unconscious girl, was
listening with avidity and trying to catch every syllable. With her thin finger
on her lips, her eyes nearly starting from their sockets, her frame motionless,
the old lady seemed herself transfixed into a statue of attention. The group was
a remarkable one, and I regretted that I was not a painter. What followed was a
scene worthy to figure in Macbeth. At one side she, the slender girl, pale and
corpse- like, writhing tinder the invisible fluid of him who for the hour was
her omnipotent master; at the other the old matron, who, burning with her
unquenched fire of revenge, stood waiting for the long-expected name of the
Prince’s murderer to be at last pronounced. The Frenchman himself seemed
transfigured, his grey hair standing on end; his bulky clumsy form seemed to
have grown in a few minutes. All theatrical pretence was now gone; there
remained but the mesmerizer, aware of his responsibility, unconscious himself of
the possible results, studying and anxiously expecting. Suddenly Frosya, as if
lifted by some super natural force, rose from her reclining posture and stood
erect before us,

100————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

again motionless and still,
waiting for the magnetic fluid to direct her. The Frenchman, silently taking the
old lady’s hand, placed it in that of the somnambulist, and ordered her to put
herself en rapport with the Gospoja.

“Search and behold!” sternly
commanded the mesmerizer, fixing his gaze upon the face of the subject.

“I am on my way—I go,” faintly
whispered Frosya, her voice seeming not to come from herself, but from the
surrounding atmosphere.

At this moment something so
strange took place that I doubt my ability to describe it. A luminous vapour
appeared, closely surround ing the girl’s body. At first about an inch in
thickness, it gradually expanded, and, gathering itself, suddenly seemed to
break off from the body altogether and condense itself into a kind of semi-solid
vapour, which very soon assumed the likeness of the somnambule herself.
Flickering about the surface of the earth the form vacillated for two or three
seconds, then glided noiselessly toward the river. It disappeared like a mist,
dissolved in the moonbeams, which seemed to absorb it altogether.

I had followed the scene with
an intense attention. The mysterious operation, known in the East as the
evocation of the scin-lecca, was taking place before my own eyes. To doubt was
impossible, and Dupotet was right in saying that mesmerism is the conscious
Magic of the ancients, and Spiritualism the unconscious effect of the same Magic
upon certain organisms.

As soon as the vaporous double
had smoked itself through the pores of the girl, Gospoja had, by a rapid motion
of the hand which was left free, drawn from under her pelisse something which
looked to us suspiciously like a small stiletto, and placed it as rapidly in
the girl’s bosom. The action was so quick that the mesmerizer, absorbed in his
work, had not remarked it, as he afterwards told me. A few minutes elapsed in a
dead silence. We seemed a group of petrified persons. Suddenly a thrilling and
transpiercing cry burst from the entranced girl’s lips, she bent forward, and
snatching the stiletto from her bosom, plunged it furiously round her, in the
air, as if pursuing imaginary foes. Her mouth foamed, and incoherent, wild
exclamations broke from her lips, among which discordant sounds I discerned
several times two familiar Christian names of men. The mesmerizer was so
terrified

101———————————————————CAN THE DOUBLE MURDER?

that he lost all control over
himself, and instead of withdrawing the fluid he loaded the girl with it still
more.

“Take care,” exclaimed I.
“Stop! You will kill her, or she will kill you!”

But the Frenchman had
unwittingly raised subtle potencies of Nature over which he had no control.
Furiously turning round, the girl struck at him a blow which would have killed
him had he not avoided it by jumping aside, receiving but a severe scratch on
the right arm. The poor man was panic-stricken; climbing with an extraordinary
agility, for a man of his bulky form, on the wall over her, he fixed himself on
it astride, and gathering the remnants of his will power, sent in her direction
a series of passes. At the second, the girl dropped the weapon and remained
motionless.

“What are
you about?” hoarsely shouted the mesmerizer in French, seated like some
monstrous night-goblin on the wall. “Answer me, I command you!’’

“I did ... but what she...whom
you ordered me to obey commanded me to do,” answered the girl in French, to my amazement.

“What did the old witch
command you?” irreverently asked he.

‘‘To find
them how murdered ..
kill them. . . I did so . . . and they are no more . . . Avenged! . . . Avenged!
They are An exclamation of triumph, a
loud shout of infernal joy, rang loud in the air, and awakening the dogs of the
neighbouring villages a responsive howl of barking began from that moment, like
a ceaseless echo of the Gospoja’s cry:

“I am avenged! I feel it; I
know it. My warning heart tells me that the fiends are no more.” She fell
panting on the ground, dragging down, in her fall, the girl, who allowed
herself to be pulled down as if she were a bag of wool.

‘‘I hope my subject did no
further mischief to—night. She is a dangerous as well as a very wonderful
subject,” said the Frenchman.

We parted. Three days after
that I was at T—, and as I was sitting in the dining-room of a restaurant,
waiting for my lunch, I happened to pick up a newspaper, and the first lines I
read ran thus:

VIENNA,
186—. TWO MYSTERIOUS DEATHS.

Last evening, at 9.45, as was
about to retire, two of the gentlemen-in-wait ing suddenly exhibited great
terror, as though they had seen a dreadful apparition.

102————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

They screamed, staggered, and
ran about the room, holding up their hands as if toward off the blows of an
unseen weapon. They paid no attention to the eager questions of the prince and
suite, but presently fell writhing upon the floor, and expired in great agony.
Their bodies exhibited no appearance of apoplexy, nor any external marks of
wounds, hot, wonderful to relate, there were numerous dark spots and long marks
upon the skin, as though they were stabs and slashes made without puncturing
the cuticle. The autopsy revealed the fact that beneath each of these mysterious
discolourations there was a deposit of coagulated blood. The greatest excitement
prevails, and the faculty are unable to solve the mystery.

HADJI
MORA.

(H. P. BLAVATSKY.)

FAKIRS AND TABLES—————

[ From the New York Sun, April
1st,1877.]

HOWEVER ignorant I may be of
the laws of the solar system, I am at all events so firm a believer in
heliocentric journalism that I sub scribe some remarks for The Sun upon my
“iconoclasm.”

No doubt it is a great honour
for an unpretending foreigner to be thus crucified between the two greatest
celebrities of your chivalrous country—the truly good Deacon Richard Smith, of
the blue gauze trousers, and the nightingale of the willow and the cypress, G.
Washington Childs, A.M. But I am not a Hindu Fakir, and therefore can not say
that I enjoy crucifixion, especially when unmerited. I do not even fancy being
swung round the “tall tower” with the steel hooks of your satire metaphorically
thrust through my back. I have not invited the reporters to a show. I have not
sought notoriety. I have only taken up a quiet corner in your free country, and,
as a woman who has travelled much, shall try to tell a Western public the
strange things I have seen among Eastern peoples. If I could have enjoyed this
privilege at home I should not be here. Being here, I shall, as your old English
proverb expresses it, “Tell the truth and shame the devil.’’

The World reporter who visited
me wrote an article which mingled his souvenirs of my stuffed apes and my
canaries, my tiger-heads and palms, with aerial music and the flitting
doppelgangers of Adepts. It was a very interesting article and was certainly
intended to be very impartial. If I appear in it to deny the immutability of
natural law, and inferentially to affirm the possibility of miracle, it is
either due to my faulty English or to the carelessness of the reader.

There are no such
uncompromising believers in the immutability and universality of the laws of
Nature as students of Occultism. Let us then, with your permission, leave the
shade of the great Newton to rest in peace. It is not the principle of the law
of gravitation, or the neces-

104——————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

sity of a central force acting
toward the sun, that is denied, but the assumption that, behind the law which
draws bodies toward the earth’s centre, and which is our most familiar example
of gravitation, there is no other law, equally immutable, that under certain
conditions appears to counteract the former.

If but once in a hundred years
a table or a Fakir is seen to rise in the air, without a visible mechanical
cause, then that rising is a manifestation of a natural law of which our
scientists are as yet ignorant. Christians believe in miracles; Occultists
credit them even less than pious scientists, Sir David Brewster, for instance.
Show an Occultist an Unfamiliar phenomenon, and he will never affirm a priori
that it is either a trick or a miracle. he will search for the cause in the
reason of causes.

There was an anecdote about
Babinet, the astronomer, current in Paris in 1854, when the great war was raging
between the Academy and the “waltzing tables.” This sceptical man of science had
proclaimed in the Revue des Deux Mondes (January, 1854, p. 414) that the
levitation of furniture without contact “was simply as impossible as perpetual
motion.” A few days later, during an experimental seance, a table was levitated
without contact in his presence. The result was that Babinet went straight to a
dentist to have a molar tooth extracted, which the iconoclastic table in its
aerial flight had seriously damaged. But it was too late to recall his article.

I suppose nine men out of ten,
including editors, would maintain that the undulatory theory of light is one of
the most firmly establislied. And yet if you will turn to page 22 of The New
Chemistry, by Prof. Josiah P. Cooke, Jr., of Harvard University (New York,
1876), you will find him saying:

I cannot agree with those who
regard the wave-theory of light as an established principle of science. . . . It
requires a combination of qualities in the ether of space which I find it
difficult to believe are actually realized.

What is this
that iconoclasm?

Let us bear in mind that
Newton himself accepted the corpuscular theory of Pythagoras and his
predecessors, from whom he learned it, and that it was only en desespoir de
cause that later scientists accepted the wave theory of Descartes and Huyghens.
Kepler maintained the magnetic nature of the sun. Leibnitz ascribed the
planetary motions to agitations of an ether. Borelli anticipated Newton in his
discovery, although he failed to demonstrate it as triumphantly. Huyghens and

105————————————————————FAKIRS AND TABLES.

Boyle, Horrocks and Hooke,
Halley and Wren, all had ideas of a central force acting toward the sun, and of
the true principle of diminution of action of the force in the ratio of the
inverse square of the distance. The last word has not yet been spoken with
respect to gravitation; its limitations can never be known until the nature of
the sun is better understood.

They are just beginning to
recognize—see Prof. Balfour Stewart’s lecture at Manchester, entitled, The Sun
and the Earth, and Prof. A. M. Mayer’s lecture, The Earth a Great Magnet—the
intimate connection between the sun’s spots and the position of the heavenly
bodies. The interplanetary magnetic attractions are but just being
demonstrated. Until gravitation is understood to be simply magnetic attraction
and repulsion, and the part played by magnetism itself in the endless correlations of forces in the ether of space—that “hypothetical medium,” as Webster
terms it—is better grasped, I maintain that it is neither fair nor wise to deny
the levitation of either Fakir or table. Bodies oppositely electrified attract
each other; similarly electrified they repulse each other. Admit, therefore,
that any body having weight, whether man or inanimate object, can by any cause
whatever, external or internal, be given the same polarity as the spot on which
it stands, and what is to prevent its rising?

Before charging me with
falsehood when I affirm that I have seen both men and objects levitated, you
must first dispose of the abundant testimony of persons far better known than my
humble self. Mr. Crookes, Prof. Thury of Geneva, Louis Jacolliot, your own Dr.
Gray and Dr. Warner, and hundreds of others, have, first and last, certified
the fact of levitation.

I am surprised to find how
little even the editors of your erudite contemporary, The World, are acquainted
with Oriental metaphysics in general, and the trousers of the Hindu Fakirs in
particular. It was bad enough to make those holy mendicants of the religion of
Brahmâ graduate from the Buddhist Lamaseries of Tibet; but it is unpardonable
to make them wear baggy breeches in the exercise of their religious functions.

This is as bad as if a
Hindu
journalist had represented the Rev. Mr. Beecher entering his pulpit in the scant
costume of the Fakir—the dhoti, a cloth about the loins, “only that and nothing
more.” To account, therefore, for the oft-witnessed, open-air levitations of
tile Swamis and Gurus upon the theory of an iron frame concealed beneath

106————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

the clothing, is as reasonable
as Monsieur Babinet’s explanation of the table-tipping and tapping as
unconscious ventriloquism.

You may object to the act of
disembowelling, which I am compelled to affirm I have seen performed. It is as
you say, “remarkable,” but still not miraculous. Your suggestion that Dr.
Hammond should go and see it is a good one. Science would be the gainer, and
your humble correspondent be justified. Are you, however, in a position to
guarantee that he would furnish the world of sceptics with an example of
“veracious reporting,” if his observation should tend to overthrow the pet
theories of what we loosely call science?

Yours very respectfully,

H. P.
BLAVATSKY.

New York, March 28th, 1877.

A PROTEST

[From the New York
World April
6th, 1877.]

THERE was a time when the
geocentric theory was universally accepted by Christian nations, and if you and
I had then been carrying on our little philological and psychological
controversy, I should have bowed in humility to the dictum of an authority so
particularly at home in “the Mysticism of the Orient” But despite all
modifications of our astronomical system, I am no heliolater, though I do
subscribe for The Sun as well as The World. I feel no more bound to “cajole” or
conciliate the one than to suffer my feeble taper to be extinguished by the
draught made by the other in its diurnal rush through journalistic space.

As near as I can judge from
your writing there is this difference between us, that I write from personal
experience, and you upon information and belief My authorities are my eyes and
ears; yours, obsolete works of reference and the pernicious advice of a
spontaneously generated Lampsakano who learned his Mysticism from the detached head of
one Dummkopf. (See The Sun of March 25th My assertions may be corroborated by any
traveller, as they have been by the first authorities. Elphinstone’s Kingdom of
Kabul was published sixty-two years ago (1815), his History of India thirty-six
years ago. If the latter is the “standard text-book” for British civil servants,
it certainly is not so for native Hindus, who perhaps know as much of their
Philosophy and Religion as he. In fact, a pretty wide reading of European
“authorities” has given me a very poor opinion of them, since no two agree. Sir
William Jones himself, whose shoe-strings few Orientalists are worthy to untie,
made very grave mistakes, which are now being corrected by Max Muller and
others. He knew nothing of the Vedas (see Max Muller’s Chips, vol. i. p.
183),
and even expressed his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Woden or Odin, and Shâkya—another name of Buddha—the same as Shishak, a king of

108————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Egypt! Why, therefore, could
not Elphinstone make a mess of such subtle religious distinctions as the
innumerable sects of Hindu Mystics existing at present?

I am charged with such
ignorance that I imagine the Fakirs to be holy mendicants of the religion of
Brahma,” while you say they are not of the religion of Brahma at all, but
Mohammedans.

Does this precious piece of
information also come from Elphinstone? Then I give you a Roland for your
Oliver. I refer you to James Mill’s History of British India, vol. . i-283
(London: 1858). You say:

Those seeking ready-made
information can find our statements corroborated in any encyclopædia.

Perhaps you refer to
Appleton’s? Very well. In the article on James Mill (vol. ii. p. 501), you will
find it saying that his India

Was the first complete work on
the subject. It was without a rival as a source of information, and the justice
of its views appeared in the subsequent measures for the government of that
country.

Now, Mill says that the

Fakirs are a sect of
Brâhmanism; and that their penances are prescribed by the Laws of Manu.

Will your Lamp-sickener, or
whatever the English of that Greek may be, say that Manu was a Mohammedan? And
yet this would be no worse than your clothing the Fakirs, who belong, as a rule,
to the Brâhman pagodas, in yellow—the colour exclusively worn by Buddhist
lamas—and breeches—which form part of the costume of the Mohammedan dervishes.
Perhaps it is a natural mistake for your Lampsakanoi, who rely upon Elphinstone
for their facts and have not visited India, to confound the Persian dervishes
with the Hindu Fakirs. But “while the lamp holds out to burn” read Louis
Jacolliot’s Bible in India, just out, and learn from a man who has passed twenty
years in India, that your correspondent is neither a fool nor a liar.

You charge me with saying that
a Fakir is a “worshipper of God.” I say I did not, as the expression I used,
“Fakir is a loose word,” well proves. It was a natural mistake of the reporter,
who did not employ stenography at our interview. I said, “A Svamis one who
devotes himself entirely to the service of God.”

All Svamis of the Nir-Narrain
sects are Fakirs, but all Fakirs are not necessarily Svamis. I refer you to
Coleman’s Mythology of the Hindus (p. 244.), and to The Asiatic Journal.
Coleman says precisely what Louis Jacolliot says, and both corroborate me. You
very oblig-

109——————————————————————A PROTEST.

ingly give me a lesson in
Hindustâni and Devanâgari, and teach me the etymology of “Guru,” “Fakir,” “Gossain,”
etc. For answer I refer you to John Shakespear’s large Hindustani-English
Dictionary. I may know less English than your Lampsakanoi, but I do know of Hindustâni and Sanskrit more than can be learned on Park Row.

As I have
said in another communication, I did not invite the visits of reporters, nor
seek the notoriety which has suddenly been thrust upon me. If I reply to your
criticisms—rhetorically brilliant, but wholly unwarranted by the facts—it is
because I value your good opinion (without caring to cajole you), and at the
same time cannot sit quiet and be made to appear alike devoid of experience,
knowledge and truthfulness.

Respectfully, but still
rebelliously, yours,

H. P.
BLAVATSKY.

Monday, April 2nd, 1877.

THE FATE OF THE OCCULTIST

[From the New York World, May 6th,
1877.]

FROM the first month of my
arrival in America I began, for reasons mysterious, but perhaps intelligible, to
provoke hatred among those who pretended to be on good terms with Me, if not
the best of friends. Slanderous reports, vile insinuations and innuendoes have
rained about me. For more than two years I have kept silent, although the least
of the offences attributed to me were calculated to excite the loathing of a
person of My disposition. I have rid myself of a number of these retailers of
slander, but finding that I was actually suffering in the estimation of friends
whose good opinion I valued, I adopted a policy of seclusion. For two years my
world has been in my apartments, and for an average of at least seventeen hours
a day I have sat at my desk, with my books and manuscripts as my companions.
During this time many highly-valued acquaintanceships have been formed with
ladies and gentlemen who have sought me out, without expecting me to return
their visits.

I am an old woman, and I feel
the need of fresh air as much as any one, but my disgust for the lying,
slanderous world that one finds out side of “heathen” uncivilized countries has
been such that in seven months I believe I have been out but three times. But no
retreat is secure against the anonymous slanderer, who uses the United States
mail. Letters have been received by my trusted friends containing the foulest
aspersions upon myself. At various times I have been charged with: (1)
drunkenness; (2) forgery; (3) being a Russian spy; (4) with being an
anti-Russian spy; (5) with being no Russian at all, but a French adventuress;
(6) with having been in jail for theft; (7) with being the mistress of a Polish
count in Union Square; (8) with murdering seven husbands; (9) with bigamy; (10)
with being tile mistress of Col. Olcott, (11) also of an acrobat. Other things
might be mentioned, but decency forbids.

111———————————————————THE FATE OF’ THE OCCULTIST.

Since the arrival of Wong Chin
Foo the game has recomrnenced with double activity. We have received anonymous
letters and others, and newspaper slips, telling infamous stories about him. On
his part, he has received communications about us, one of which I beg you to
insert.

May 4th..

Does the disciple of Buddha
know the character of the people with whom he is at present residing? The
surroundings of a teacher of morality and religion should be moral. Are his so?
On the contrary, they are people of very doubtful reputation, as he can
ascertain by applying at the nearest police-station.

A FRIEND.

Of Wong Chin Foo’s merits or
shortcomings I know nothing, except that since his arrival his conversation and
behaviour have impressed me very favourably. He appears to be a very earnest and
enthusiastic student. However, he is a man, and is able to take care of himself,
although, like me, a foreigner. But I wish to say for myself just this:
that I defy any person in
America to come forward and prove a single charge against my honour. I invite
everyone possessed of such proof as will vindicate them in a court of justice to
publish it over their own signatures in the newspapers. I will furnish to anyone
a list of my several residences, and contribute towards paying detectives to
trace my every step. But I hereby give notice that if any more unverifiable
slanders can be traced to responsible sources, I will invoke the protection of
the law, which, it is the theory of your national Constitution, was made for
heathen as well as Christian denizens.

Respectfully,

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, May 5th 1877

BUDDHISM IN AMERICA.

[From the New York Sun, May 13th,
1877.]

As, in your leading article of
May 6th, I am at one moment given credit for knowing something about the
religion of the Brâhmans and Buddhists, and, anon, of being a pretender of the
class of Jacolliot, and even his plagiarist, you will not wonder at my again
knocking at your doors for hospitality. This time I write over my own signature,
and am responsible, as I am not under other circumstances.

No wonder that the “learned
friend” at your elbow was reminded “of the utterances of one Louis Jacolliot.”

The paragraphs in the very
able account of your representative’s interview, which relate to “Adhima and
Heva” and “Jezeus Christna,” were translated bodily, in his presence, from the
French edition of the Bible in India. They were read, moreover, from the
chapter entitled, “Bagaveda”—instead of “Bhagavat,” as you put it, kindly
correcting me. In so doing, in my humble opinion, he is right, and the others
are wrong, were it but for the reason that the Hindus themselves so pronounce
it—at least those of southern India, who speak either the Tamil language or
other dialects. Since we seek in vain among Sanskrit philologists for any two
who agree as to the spelling or meaning of important Hindu words, and scarcely
two as to the orthography of this very title, I respectfully submit that neither
“the French fraud” nor I are chargeable with any grave offence in the premises.

For instance, Prof. Whitney,
your greatest American Orientalist, and one of the most eminent living, spells
it Bagavata; while his equally great opponent, Max Muller, prefers Bagavadgitâ,
and half a dozen others spell it in as many different ways. Naturally each
scholar, in rendering the Indian words into his own vernacular, follows the
national rule of pronunciation; and so, you will see, that Prof. Muller in
writing the syllable ad with an a does precisely what Jacolliot does in spelling
it ed, the French e having the same sound as the

113————————————————————BUDDHISM IN AMERICA.

English a before a consonant.
The same holds good with the name of the Hindu Saviour, which by different
authorities is spelt Krishna, Crisna, Khristna and Krisna; everything, in short,
but the right way, Christna, Perhaps you may say that this is there hypothesis.
But since every Indianist follows his own fancy in his phonetic transcriptions,
I do not know why I may not exercise my best judgment, especially as I can give
good reasons to support it.

You affirm that there “never
was a Hindu reformer named Jezeus Christna”; and, although I confined my
affirmation of his existence to the authority of Jacolliot at the interview in
question, I now assert on my own responsibility that there was, and is, a
personage of that name recognized and worshipped in India, and that he is not
Jesus Christ. Christna is a Brâhmanical deity, and, besides by the Brâhmans, is
recognized by several sects of the Jains. When Jacolliot says “Jezeus Christna,”
he only shows a little clumsiness in phonetic rendering, and is nearer right
than many of his critics. I have been at the festivals of Janmotsar, in
commemoration of the birth of Christna (which is their Christmas) and have heard
thousands of voices shouting: “Jas-i Christna! Jasas-wi-Christna!” Translated
they are: Jas-i, renowned, famous, and Jasas-wi, celebrated, or
divinely-renowned, powerful; and Christna, sacred. To avoid being again
contradicted, I refer the reader to any Hindustâni dictionary. All the Brâhmans
with whom I have talked on the subject spoke of Christna either as Jas-i-Christna,
or Jadar Christna, or again used the term, Yadur-pati, Lord of Yâdavas,
descendant of Yadu, one of the many titles of Christna in India. You see,
therefore, that it is but a question of spelling.

That Christna is preferable to
Krishna can be clearly shown under the rules laid down by Burnouf and others
upon the authority of the pandits. True, the initial of the name in the Sanskrit
is generally written k; but the Sanskrit k is strongly aspirated; it is a
guttural expiration, whose only representation is the Greek chi. In English,
therefore, the k instead of having the sound of k as in king would be even
more aspirated than the h in heaven. As in English the Greek word is written
Christos in preference to H’ristos, which would be nearer the mark, so with the
Hindu deity; his name under the same rule should be written Christna,
notwithstanding the possible unwelcomeness of the resemblance.

M. Taxtor de Ravisi, a French
Catholic Orientalist, and for ten years Governor of Karikal (India), Jacolliot’s
bitterest opponent in religious

114———————————————————
A MODERN PANARION.

conclusions, fully appreciates
the situation. He would have the name spelt Krishna, because (1) most of the
statues of this God are black, and Krishna means black; and (2) because the real
name of Christna “was Kaneya, or Caneya.” Very well; but black is Krishna. And
if not only Jacolliot, but the Brâhnians themselves are not to be allowed to
know as much as their European critics, we will call in the aid of Volney and
other Orientalists, who show that the Hinds deity’s name is formed from the
radical Chris, meaning sacred, as Jacolliot shows it. Moreover, for the Brâhmans
to call their God the “black one would be unnatural and absurd; while to style
him the sacred, or pure essence, would be perfectly appropriate to their
notions. As to the name being Caneya, M. Taxtor de Ravisi, in suggesting it,
completes his own discomfiture. In escaping Scylla he falls into Charybdis. I
suppose no one will deny that the Sanskrit Kanyâ means Virgin, for even in
modern Hindustâni the Zodiacal sign of Virgo is called Kaniya. Christna is
styled Kâneya, as having been born of a Virgin. Begging pardon, then, of the
“learned friend” at your elbow, I reaffirm that if there “never was a Hindu
reformer named Jezeus Christna,” there was a Hindu Saviour, who is worshipped
unto this day as Jasi Christna, or, if it better accords with his pious
preferences, Jas-i-Kristna.

When the 84,000 volumes of the
Dharma Khanda, or sacred books of the Buddhists, and the thousands upon
thousands of ollæ of Vaidic and Brâhmanical literature, now known by their titles
only to European scholars, or even a tithe of those actually in their
possession are translated, and comprehended, and agreed upon, I will be happy to
measure swords again with the solar pandit who has prompted your severe
reflections upon your humble subscriber

Though, in common with various
authorities, you stigmatize Jacolliot as a “French fraud,” I must really do him
the justice to say that his Catholic opponent, De Ravisi, said of his Bible in
India, in a report made at the request of the Sociéte Académique de St.
Quentin,
that it is written

With good faith, of absorbing
interest, a learned work on known facts and with familiar arguments.

Ten years’ residence and
studies in India were surely enough to fit him to give an opinion.
Unfortunately, however, in America it is but too easy to gain the reputation of
“a fraud” in much less time.

Respectfully,

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

RUSSIAN ATROCITIES

[From the New York
World, Aug.
13th, 1877.]

THE Sublime Porte has had the
sublime effrontery to ask the American people to execrate Russian barbarity. It
appeals for sympathy on behalf of helpless Turkish subjects at the seat of war.
With the memories of Bulgaria and Servia still fresh, this seems the climax of
daring hypocrisy. Barely a few months ago the reports of Mr. Schuyler and other
impartial observers of the atrocities of Bashi Bazouks sent a thrill of horror
through the world. Perpetrated under official sanction, they aroused the
indignation of all who had hearts to feel. In to-day’s paper I read another
account of pretended Russian cruelties, and your able and just editorial
comments upon the same. Permit one who is, perhaps, in a better position than
any other private person here to know what is taking place at the front, to
inform you of certain facts derived from authentic sources. Besides receiving
daily papers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tiflis and Odessa, I have an uncle, a
cousin and a nephew on active service, and every steamer brings me accounts of
military improvements from eye-witnesses. My cousin and nephew have taken part in
all bloody engagements in Turkish Armenia up to the present time, and were at
the siege and capture of Ardahan. Newspapers may suppress, colour or exaggerate
facts; the private letters of brave soldiers to their families rarely do.

Let me say, then, that during
this campaign the Turkish troops have been guilty of such fiendish acts as to
make me pray that my relatives may be killed rather than fall into their hands.
In a letter from the Danube, corroborated by several correspondents of German
and Austrian papers, the writer says:

On June 20th we entered
Kozlovetz, a Bulgarian town of about two hundred houses, which lies three or
four hours distant from Sistova. The sight which met our eyes made the blood of
every Russian soldier run cold, hardened though he is to such scenes. On the
principal street of the deserted town were placed in rows 140 beheaded bodies of
men, women, and children. The heads of these unfortu-

116———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

nates were tastefully piled in
a pyramid in the middle of the street. Among the smoking ruins of every house we
found half-burned corpses, fearfully mutilated. We caught a Turkish soldier, and
to our questions he reluctantly confessed that their chiefs had given orders not
to leave a Christian place, however small, before burning it and putting to
death every man, woman, and child.

On the first day that the
Danube was crossed some foreign correspondents, among them that of the Cologne
Gazette, saw several bodies of Russian soldiers whose noses, ears, hands, etc.,
had been cut off, while the genital organs had been stuffed into the mouths of
the corpses. Later, three bodies of Christian women were found—a mother and two
daughters—whose condition makes one almost drop the pen in horror at the
thought. Entirely nude, split open from below to the navel, their heads cut off;
the wrists of each corpse were tied together with strips of skin and flesh
flayed from the shoulder down; and the corpses of the three martyrs were
similarly bound to each other by long ribbons of flesh dissected from their
thighs.

A correspondent writes from
Sistova:

The Emperor continues his
daily visits to the hospitals and passes whole hours with the wounded. A few
(lays ago His Majesty, accompanied by Colonel Wellesley, the British military
attache, visited two unfortunate Bulgarians who died on the night following. The
skull of one of them was split open both laterally and vertically, by two
sword-cuts, an eye was torn out, and he was otherwise mutilated. He explained,
as well as he could, that several Turks seeing him, demanded his money. As he
had none, four of the party held him fast while the fifth, brandishing his
sword, and repeating all the time, “There, you Christian dog, there’s your cross
for you!” first split his skull from the forehead to the back of the head, and
then crosswise from ear to ear. While the Emperor was listening to these details
the greatest agony was depicted upon his face. Taking Colonel Wellesley by the
arm, and pointing to the Bulgarian, he said to him in French: “See the work of
your prolégés’” The British officer blushed and was much confused.

The special correspondent of
the London Standard, describing his audience with the Grand Duke Nicholas,
Commander-in-Chief, on July 7th, says that the Grand Duke communicated to him the
most horrifying details about the cruelties committed at Dobroudga. A Christian
whose hands were tied with strips of his own skin cut from the length of both
his arms, and his tongue cut down from the root, was laid at the feet of the
Emperor and died there before the eyes of the Czar and the British agent, the
same Colonel Wellesley, who was in attendance. Turning to the latter, His
Majesty, with a stern expression, asked him to inform his Government of what he
had just seen for himself. Says the correspondent:

117————————————————————RUSSIAN ATROCITIES.

From the beginning of the war
I have heard of quite a number of such cases, but never witnessed one myself:
After the personal assurances given to me by the Grand Duke, it is no longer
possible to doubt that the Turkish officers are unable to control their
irregular troops.

The correspondent of
The Northern Messenger had gone the rounds of the hospitals to question the wounded
soldiers. Four of them, belonging to the Second Battalion of Minsk Rifles,
testified with the most solemn asseverations that they had seen the Turks
approach the wounded, rob them, mutilate their bodies in the most cruel way,
finish them with the bayonet. They themselves had avoided this fate only by
feigning death. It is a common thing for wounded Turks to allure Russian
soldiers and members of the sanitary corps to their assistance, and, as they
bend over them, to kill with a revolver or dagger those who would relieve them.
A case like this occurred under the eye of one of my correspondents in Turkish
Armenia, and was in all the Russian papers. A sergeant’s assistant (a sanitar)
was despatched under such circumstances; thereupon a soldier standing by killed
the assassin.

My cousin, Major Alexander U.
White—of the Sixteenth Nijegorodsk Dragoons, one of the most gallant soldiers
in the army of Loris Melikof and who has just been decorated by the Grand Duke,
under the authority of the Emperor, with a golden sword inscribed, “For
Bravery”—says that it is becoming positively dangerous to relieve a wounded
Turk. The people who robbed and killed the wounded in the hospital at Ardahan
upon the entry of the Russian troops were the Karapapahs, Mussulmans and the
supposed allies of the Turks. During the siege they prudently awaited the issue
from a safe distance. As soon as the Russians conquered, the Karapapahs flew
like so many tigers into the town, slaying the wounded Turks, robbing the dead,
pillaging houses, bringing the horses and mules of the fleeing enemy into the
Russian camp, and swearing allegiance to the Commander-in-Chief. The Cossacks
had all the trouble in the world to prevent their new allies from continuing the
greatest excesses. To charge, therefore, upon the Russians the atrocities of
these cowardly jackals (a nomadic tribe of brigands) is an impudent lie of
Mukhtar Pasha, whose falsifications have become so notorious that some Parisian
papers have nicknamed him “Blaguer Pasha.” His despatches are only matched in
mendacity by those of the Spanish commanders in Cuba.

118————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

The stupidity of charging such
excesses upon the Russian army becomes apparent when we remember that the policy
of the Government from the first has been to pay liberally for supplies, and
win the goodwill of the people of the invaded provinces by kindness. So marked
and successful has this policy proved in General Loris Melikof’s field of
operations, that the anti-Russian papers of England, Austria and other countries
have denounced it as Russian “craft.” With the Danubian forces is the Emperor in
person, liberator of millions of serfs, and the mildest and justest sovereign
who has ever occupied the throne of any country. As he won the love of his whole
people and the adoration of his army by his sense of justice and benevolent
regard, I ask you if he is likely to countenance any cruel excesses? While the
cowardly Abdul-Hamid hides in the alcoves of his harem, and of the imperial
princes none have taken the field, the Czar follows his army, step by step,
submits to comparatively severe and unaccustomed hardships, and exposes his
health and life against all the rernonstrances and prayers of Prince Gortschakof.
His four sons are all in active service, and the son of the Grand Duke Nicholas
was decorated at the crossing of the Danube for personal courage, having exposed
his life for hours under a shower of bullets.

I only ask the American people
to do justice to their long-tried and unfaltering friends, the Russians. However
politicians may have planned, the Russian people have entered this war as a holy
crusade to rescue millions of helpless Slavonians—their brothers—of the Danube
from Turkish cruelty. The people have dragged the Government to the field.
Russia is surrounded by false neutrals, who but watch the opportunity to fly at
her throat, and, shameful fact, the blessing of the Pope rests upon the Moslem
standards, and his curse against his fellow Christians has been read in all the
Catholic churches. For my part, I care a great deal less even than my countrymen
for his blessings or curses, for besides other reasons I regard this war not as
one of Christian against Moslem, but as one of humanity and civilization against
barbarism. This is the view of the Catholic Czecks of Bohemia. So great was
their indignation at what they rightly considered the dishonour of the Roman
Catholic Church that on July 4th—anniversary of the martyrdom of John Huss—notwithstanding
the efforts of the police, they repaired in multitudes to the heights of
Smichovo, Beraun and other hills around Prague, and burnt at the stake the
portraits and wax effigies of the Pope and the Prince Archbishop

119————————————————————RUSSIAN ATROCITIES.

Schwartzenberg, and the papal
discourse against the Russian Emperor and army, singing the while Slavonian
national songs, and shouting, “Down with the Pope! Death to the Ultramontanes!
Hurrah for the Czar-Liberator! “—all of which shows that there are good
Catholics among the Slavonians, at least, who rightly hold in higher estimation
the principles of national solidarity than foolish dogmas of the Vatican, even
though backed by pretended infallibility.

Respectfully,

August 9th H. P. BLAVATSKY.

WASHING THE DISCIPLES’ FEET

[From the New York
Sun, August
16th, 1877.]

AT the ceremony of
“feet-washing” which occurred at Limwood Camp-ground, August 8th, and is
described in The Sun of to-day, Elder Jones, of Mechanicsburg, Pa., professed to
give the history of this ancient custom. The report says:

He claimed that its origin
did not date anterior to the coming of Christ; neither was the matter of
cleanliness to be thought of in this connection. Its observance was due
exclusively to the fact that it was a scriptural injunction; it originated in
Christ’s example, and it devolved upon his hearers to follow this example. Numerous scriptural passages were quoted in support of this argument.

The reverend gentleman is in
error. The ceremony was first performed by the Hindu Christna (or Krishna) who
washed the feet of his Brâhmans as an example of humility, many thousand years
anterior to the Christian era. Chapter and verse will be given, if required,
from the Brâhmanical books. Meanwhile, the reader is referred to the Rev. John
P. Lundy’s Monumental christianity, p. 154.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

TRICKERY OR MAGIC?—————

[From The Religio-Philosophical
Journal,
Dec. 22nd, 1877.]

A wise saying is that which
affirms that he who seeks to prove too much, in the end proves nothing. Prof. W.
B. Carpenter, F.R.S. (and otherwise alphabetically adorned), furnishes a
conspicuous example in his strife with men better than himself. His assaults
accumulate bitterness with every new periodical he makes his organ, and in proportion with the increase of his abuse his arguments lose force and cogency.
And, forsooth, he nevertheless lectures his antagonists for their lack of “calm
discussion,” as though he were not the very type of controversial nitro-glycerine!
Rushing at them with his proofs, which are “incontrovertible” only in his own
estimation, he commits himself more than once. By one of such committals I mean
to profit to-day, by citing some-curious experiences of my own.

My object in writing the
present is far from that of taking any part in this onslaught upon reputations.
Messrs. Wallace and Crookes are well able to take care of themselves. Each has
contributed in his own specialty towards real progress in useful knowledge more
than Dr. Carpenter in his. Both have been honoured for valuable original
researches and discoveries, while their accuser has been often charged with
being no better than a very clever compiler of other men’s ideas. After reading
the able rejoinders of the “defendants” and the scathing review of the
mace-swinging Prof. Buchanan, every one, except his friends, the psychophobists,
can see that Dr. Carpenter is completely floored. He is as dead as the
traditional door nail.

In the December supplement of
The Popular Science Monthly, I find, (p.116) the interesting admission that a
poor Hindu juggler can perform a feat that quite takes the great Professor’
breath away! In comparison, the mediumistic phenomena of Miss Nichol (Mrs.
Guppy) are of no account. Says Dr. Carpenter:

The celebrated “tree-trick,”
which most people who have been long in India have seen, as described by
several of our most distinguished civilians and scientific

122————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

officers, is simply the
greatest marvel I ever heard of. That a mango-tree should first shoot up to a
height of six inches, from a grass-plot to which the conjurers had no previous
access, beneath an inverted cylindrical basket, whose emptiness has been
previously demonstrated, and that this tree should appear to grow in the course
of half an hour from six inches to six feet, under a succession of taller and
yet taller baskets, beats Miss Nichol.

Well, I should think it did.
At any rate, it beats anything that any F.R.S. can show by daylight or dark, in
the Royal Institution or else where. Would not one think that such a phenomenon
so attested, and occurring under circumstances that preclude trickery, would
provoke scientific investigation? If not, what would? But observe the knot hole
through which an F.R.S. can creep out. “Does Mr. Wallace,” ironically asks the
Professor,

Attribute this to a spiritual
agency? or, like the world in general [of course meaning the world that science
created and Carpenter energizes] and the performers of the tree-trick in
particular, does he regard it as a piece of clever jugglery?

Leaving Mr. Wallace, if he
survives this Jovian thunder-bolt, to answer for himself, I have to say for the
“performers” that they would respond with an emphatic “No” to both
interrogatories. The Hindu jugglers neither claim for their performance a
“spiritual agency,” nor admit it to be a “trick of clever jugglery.” The ground
they take is that the tricks are produced by certain powers inherent in man him
self, which may he used for a good or bad purpose. And the ground that I, humbly
following after those whose opinion is based on really exact psychological
experiments and knowledge, take, is, that neither Dr. Carpenter nor his
body-guard of scientists, though their titles stream after their names like the
tail after a kite, have as yet the slightest conception of these powers. To
acquire even a superficial knowledge of them, they must change their scientific
and philosophical methods. Following after Wallace and Crookes, they must begin
with the A B C of Spiritualism, which—meaning to be very scornful—Dr. Carpenter
terms “the centre of enlightenment and progress.” They must take their lessons
not alone from the true but as well from spurious phenomena, from what his
(Carpenter’s) chief authority, the “arch-priest of the new religion,” properly
classifies as “Delusions, Absurdities and Trickeries.” After wading through all
this, as every intelligent investigator has had to do, he may get some glimpses
of truth. It is as useful to learn what the phenomena are not, as to find out
what they are.

123————————————————————TRICKERY OR MAGIC?

Dr. Carpenter has two patent
keys warranted to unlock every secret door of the mediumistic cabinet. They are
labelled “expectancy” and “prepossession.” Most scientists have some pick-lock
like this. But to the “tree-trick” they scarcely apply; for neither his
“distinguished civilians” nor “scientific officers” could have expected to see a
stark- naked Hindu on a strange glass-plot, in full daylight, make a mango-tree grow six feet from the seed in half an hour, their “prepossessions” would
be all against it. It cannot be a “spiritual agency”; it must be “jugglery.” Now Maskelyne and Cooke, two clever English jugglers, have been keeping the mouths
and eyes of all London wide open with their exposures of Spiritualism. They are
admired by all the scientists, and at Slade’s trial figured as expert witnesses
for the prosecution. They are at Dr. Carpenter’s elbow. Why does he not call
them to explain this clever jugglery, and make Messrs. Wallace and Crookes blush
with shame at their own idiocy? All the tricks of the trade are familiar to
them; where can science find better allies? But we must insist upon identical
conditions. The “Tree-Trick” must not be per formed by gas-light on the platform
of any Egyptian Hall, nor with the performers in full evening dress. It must be
in broad daylight, on a strange grass-plot to which the conjurers had no
previous access. There must he no machinery, no confederates, white cravats and
swallow-tail coats must be laid aside, and the English champions appear in the
primitive apparel of Adam and Eve—a tight-fitting “coat of skin,” and with the
single addition of a dhoti, or a breech cloth seven inches wide. The Hindus do
all this, and we only ask fair play. If they raise a mango-sapling under these
circumstances, Dr. Carpenter will he at perfect liberty to beat therewith the
last remnant of brains out of the head of any “crazy Spiritualist” he may
encounter. But until then, the less he says about Hindus jugglery the better for
his scientific reputation.

It is not to be denied that in
India, China and elsewhere in the East there are veritable jugglers who exhibit
tricks. Equally true is it that some of these performances surpass any with
which Western people are acquainted. But these are neither Fakirs nor the
performers of the “mango-tree” marvel, as described by Dr. Carpenter. Even this
is sometimes imitated both by Indian and European adepts in sleight of-hand, but
under totally different conditions. Modestly following in the rear of the
“distinguished civilians” and “scientific officers,” I will now narrate
something which I have seen with my own eyes.

124————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

While at Cawnpur, en route to
Benares, the holy city, a lady, my travelling companion, was robbed of the
entire contents of a small trunk. Jewelry, dresses, and even her note-book,
containing a diary which she had been carefully compiling for over three months,
had mysteriously disappeared, without the lock of the valise having been
disturbed. Several hours, perhaps a night and a day had passed since the
robbery, as we had started at daybreak to explore some neighbouring ruins,
still freshly allied with the Nana Sahib’s reprisals on the English. My
companion’s first thought was to call upon the local police; mine for the help
of some native gossain (a holy man supposed to be informed of everything) or at
least a jadugar, or conjurer. But the ideas of civilization prevailed, and a
whole week was wasted in fruitless visits to the chabutara (police-house), and
interviews with the kotwal, its chief. In despair, my expedient was at last
resorted to, and a gossain procured. We occupied a small bungalow at the extreme
end of one of the suburbs, on the right bank of the Ganges, and from the
verandah a full view of the river was had, which at that place was very narrow.

Our experiment was made on
that verandah in the presence of the family of the landlord—a half-caste
Portuguese from the south—my friend and myself and two freshly-imported
Frenchmen, who laughed outrageously at our superstition. Time, three o’clock in
the afternoon. The heat was suffocating, but notwithstanding, the holy man—a
coffee coloured, living skeleton—demanded that the motion of the pankah (hanging
fan worked by a cord) should be stopped. He gave no reason, but it was because
the agitation of the air interferes with all delicate magnetic experiments. We
had all heard of the “rolling pot” as an agency for the detection of theft in
India—a common iron pot being made, under the influence of a Hindu conjurer, to
roll of its own impulse, without any hands touching it, to the very spot where
the stolen goods are concealed. The gossain proceeded otherwise. He first of all
demanded some article that had been latest in contact with the contents of the
valise; a pair of gloves was handed him. He pressed them between his thin palms,
and, rolling them over and over again, then dropped them on the floor and
proceeded to turn himself slowly around, with arms outstretched and fingers
expanded, as though he were seeking the direction in which the property lay.
Suddenly he stopped with a jerk, sank gradually to the floor and remained motionless, sitting cross-legged and with his arms still outstretched in the

125————————————————————TRICKERY OR MAGIC?

same direction, as though
plunged in a cataleptic trance. This lasted for over an hour, which in that
suffocating atmosphere was to us one long torture. Suddenly the landlord sprang
from his seat to the balustrade, and began intently looking towards the river,
in which direction our eyes also turned. Coming from whence, or how, we could
not tell, but out there, over the water, and near its surface, was a dark object
approaching. What it was we could not make out; but the mass seemed impelled by
some interior force to revolve, at first slowly, but then faster and faster as
it drew near. It was as though supported on an invisible pavement, and its
course was in a direct line as the bee flies. It reached the bank, disappeared
again among the high vegetation, and anon, rebounding with force as it leaped
over the low garden wall, flew rather than rolled on to the verandah and dropped
with a heavy thud under the extended palms of the gossain. A violent, convulsive
tremor shook the frame of the old man, as with a deep sigh he opened his
half-closed eyes. All were astonished, but the French men stared at the bundle
with an expression of idiotic terror in their eyes. Rising from the ground the
holy man opened the tarred canvas envelope, and within were found all the stolen
articles down to the least thing. Without a word or waiting for thanks, he
salaamed low to the company and disappeared through the doorway, before we
recovered from our surprise. We had to run after him a long way before we could
press upon him a dozen rupees, which blessings he received in his wooden bowl.

This may appear a very
surprising and incredible story to Europeans and Americans who have never been
in India. But we have Dr. Carpenter’s authority for it, that even his
“distinguished civilian” friends and “scientific officers,” who are as little
likely to sniff out anything mystical there with their aristocratic noses as Dr.
Carpenter to see it with his telescopic, microscopic, double-magnifying
scientific eyes in England, have witnessed the mango “tree-trick,” which is
still more wonderful. If the latter is “clever jugglery” the other must be, too.
Will the white-cravated and swallow-tailed gentlemen of the Egyptian Hall,
please show the Royal Society how either is done?

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

THE JEWS IN RUSSIA

[From the New York
World, Sept.
25th, 1877.]

IT is to be regretted that
your incandescent contemporary, The Sun, should have no better sources of
information. It stated on Saturday last that

In Russia the persecution of
the Israelites is continued, with nearly all its ancient cruelty. They are not
permitted to reside in many of the greatest cities. Kief and Novgorod as well as
Moscow are forbidden to them, and even in the rural districts they are burdened
with multiform exactions.

This is the reverse of
correct, as is also the further statement that

They have been robbed and
oppressed in Bulgaria by the Russians.

The murdering and plundering
at the seat of war, it is now pretty well settled, has been done by the Turks
exclusively, and, notwithstanding that the English and other Turkophile organs
have diligently cast the blame upon the Russians, the plot f the Ottoman
Government, thanks to the honest old German Emperor, is now discovered. The
Turks are convicted of systematic lying, and nearly every country, including
England herself, has sent a protest to the Sublime Porte against atrocities. As
to the condition of Israelites in Russia, it has immensely improved since the
ascension of Alexander II to the throne of his father. For more than ten years
they have been placed on jury duty, admitted to the bar, and otherwise accorded
civil rights and privileges. If social disabilities still linger, we are
scarcely the ones to chide, in view of our Saratoga and Long Branch customs, and
the recent little unpleasantness between Mr. Hilton and the descendants of the
“chosen people.”

If your neighbour would take
the trouble to ask any traveller or Russian Israelite now in America, it would
learn that Kief, as well as other “greatest cities” are full of Jews; that in
fact there are more Jews than Gentiles in the first-named of these cities.
Pretty much all trade is in their hands, and they furnish even all the olive-oil
that is perma-

127————————————————————THE JEWS IN RUSSIA.

nently burnt at the rakka
(shrines) of the 700 orthodox saints whose beatified mummies fill up the
catacombs of Kief, and the wax for the candles on all the altars. It is again
the Jews who keep the dram-shops, or Kabak, where the faithful congregate after
service to give a last fillip to their devotional ardour. It is barely four
months since the chief Rabbi of Moscow published in the official Viedomosty an
earnest address to his co-religionists throughout the empire to remind them that
they were Russians by nativity, and called upon them to display their patriotism
in subscriptions for the wounded, prayers in the synagogues for the success of
the Russian arms, and in all other practical ways. In 1870, during the emeut
in Odessa, which was caused by some Jewish children throwing dirt into the
church on Easter night, and which lasted more than a week, the Russian soldiers
shot and bayoneted twelve Christian Russians and not a single Jew; while—and I
speak as an eye-witness—over two hundred rioters were publicly whipped by order
of the Governor-General, Kotzebue, of whom none were Israelites. That there is a
hatred between them and the more fanatical Christians is true, but the Russian
Government can be no more blamed for this than the British and American
Governments because Orangemen and Catholics mutually hate, beat, and
occasionally kill each other.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, Sept. 24th 1877.

H. P. BLAVATSKY’S MASONIC

PATENT

[From The
Franklin Register, Feb. 8th, 1878.]

[ EDITORIAL.— are gratified to be able to
present to the readers of The Register this week, the following
highly-characteristic letter, prepared expressly for our paper by Madame Helen
P. Blavatsky, the authoress of Isis Unveiled. In this letter the lady defends
the validity of her diploma as a Mason, reference to which was had in our issue
of January 8th. The immediate cause of the letter from Madame B. was the
multiplication of attacks upon her claim to that distinguished honour both before
and since the publication mentioned.

The field is open for a
rejoinder; and we trust that a champion will appear, to defend that which she so
vigorously and bravely assails.

That the subject-matter in
controversy may be seen at a glance by those who may not be regular readers of
our paper, we again print the text of her diploma.

To the Glory of the Sublime
Architect of the Universe.

Ancient and
Primitive Rite
of Masonry, derived through the Charter of the

Sovereign Sanctuary of
America, from the Grand Council of the

Grand Lodge of France.

Salutation on all points of
the Triangle.

Respect to the Order.

Peace, Tolerance, Truth.

To all Illustrious and
Enlightened Masons throughout the world—union, prosperity,

friendship, fraternity.

We, the The Sovereign Grand
Master General, and we, the Sovereign Grand Conservators, thirty-third and last
degree of the Sovereign Sanctuary for England, Wales, etc., decorated with the
Grand Star of Sirius, etc., Grand Commanders of the Three Legions of the Knights
of Masonry, by virtue of the high authority with which we are invested, have
declared and proclaimed, and by these presents do declare and proclaim our
illustrious and enlightened Brother, H. P. Blavatsky, to be an Apprentice,
Companion, Perfect Mistress, Sublime Elect

Given under our hands and the
seals of the Sovereign Sanctuary for England and Wales, sitting in the Valley of
London, this 24th day of November, 1877, year of true light ooo,ooo,ooo.

JOHN YARKER, thirty-third
degree, Sovereign Grand Master.

M. CASPARI,
thirty-third degree,
Grand chancellor.

A. D. LOEWENSRARK,
thirty-third degree, Grand Secretary.]
—————

To the Editor of “ The
Frankin Register.”

I am obliged to correct
Certain errors in your highly complimentary editorial in The Register of January
18th. You say that I have taken “the regular degrees in Masonic Lodges” and
attained high dignity in the order, and further add:

Upon Madame B. has recently
been conferred the diploma of the thirty-third Masonic Degree, from the oldest
Masonic body in the world.

If you will kindly refer to my
Isis Unveiled (vol. ii. p. 394), YOU will find me saying:

We are neither under promise,
obligation, nor oath, and therefore violate no confidence,—reference being made to
Western Masonry, to the criticism of which the chapter is devoted; and full
assurance is given that I have never taken “the regular degrees” in any Western
Masonic Lodge. Of course, therefore, having taken no such degrees, I am not a
thirty-third degree Mason. In a private note, also in your most recent
editorial, you state that you find yourself taken to task by various Masons,
among them one who has taken thirty-three degrees—which include the
“Ineffable”—for what you said about me. My Masonic experience—if you will so term
membership in several Eastern Masonic Fraternities and Esoteric Brotherhoods—is
confined to the Orient. But, nevertheless, this neither prevents my knowing, in
common with all Eastern “Masons,” everything connected with Western Masonry (including the numberless humbugs that have been imposed upon the Craft during the
last half century) nor, since the receipt of the diploma from the “Sovereign
Grand Master,” of which you publish the text, my being entitled to call myself
a Mason. Claiming nothing, therefore, in Western Masonry but what is expressed
in the above diploma, you will perceive that your Masonic mentors must transfer
their quarrel to John Yarker, jun., P.M., P.Mk., M.Pz., P.G.C., and M.W.S.K.T.
and R.C., K.T., P.K.H., and K.A.R.S., P.M.W., P.S.G.C. and P.S.,

130———————————————————
A MODERN PANARION.

Dai AD., A. and P. Rite, to
the man, in short, who is recognized in England and Wales and the whole world,
as a member of the Masonic Archæological Institute; as Honorary Fellow of the London
Literary Union; of Lodge No. 227, Dublin; of the Bristol College of Rosicrucians; who is Past Grand Mareschal of the Temple; member of the Royal Grand
Council of the Antient Rites time immemorial; keeper of the Ancient Royal
Secrets, Grand Commander of Mizraim, Ark Mariners, Red Cross Constantine,
Babylon and Palestine, R. Grand Superintendent for Lancashire, Sovereign Grand
Conservator of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, thirty-third and last
degree, etc., from whom the Patent issued.

Your “Ineffable” friend must
have cultivated his spiritual perceptions to small purpose in the investigation
and contemplation of the “Ineffable Name,” from the fourth to the fourteenth
degrees of that gilded humbug, the A. and A. Rite, if he could say that there
is,

No authority for a derivation
through the charter of the Sovereign Sanctuary of America, to issue this patent.

He lives in a veritable
Crystal Palace of Masonic glass, and must look out for falling stones. Brother
Yarker says, in his Notes on the

Modern
Rosicrucianism and the
various Rites and Degrees (p. 149), that the Grand Orient, derived from the
Craft Grand Lodge of England, in 1725, works and recognizes the following
Rites, appointing representatives with chapters in America and elsewhere: 1.
French Rite; 2. Rite of Heredom; 3. A. and A. Rite; 4. Rite of Kilwinning; 5.
Philosophical Rite; 6. Rite du Régime rectif; 7. Rite of Memphis; 8. Rite of
Mizraim. All under a grand college of Rites.

The A. and P. Rite was
originally chartered in America, November 9th 1856, with David McChellan as G. M.
[ Kenneth Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopædia p. 43], and in 1862 submitted
entirely to the Grand Orient of France. In 1862, the Grand Orient vised and
sealed the American Patent of Seymour as G. M., and mutual representatives were
appointed, down to 1866, when the relations of the G. 0. with America were
ruptured, and the American Sovereign Sanctuary took up its position, “in the
bosom” of the Ancient Cernear Council, of the “Scottish Rite” of thirty-three
degrees, as John Yarker says, in the above quoted work. In 1872 a Sovereign
Sanctuary of the Rite was established in England, by the American Grand Body,
with John Yarker as Grand Master. Down to the present time the legality of
Seymour’s Sanctuary has never been disputed by the Grand Orient of France, and
reference to it is found in Marconis de Nègre’s books.

131——————————————————H. P. BLAVATSKY’S MASONIC
PATENT.

It sounds very grand, no
doubt, to be a thirty-second degreeist, and an “Ineffable” one into the bargain;
but read what Robert B. Folger, M.D., Past Master thirty-third, says himself in
his Ancient’ and Accepted Scottish Rite in Thirty-three Degrees:

With reference to the other
degrees, . . . (with the exception of the thirty third, which was manufactured
in Charleston) they were all in the possession of the G. 0. before, but were
termed ... obsolete.

And further: he asks:

Who were the persons that
formed this Supreme Council of the thirty-third degree? And where did they get
that degree, or the power to confer it?

Their patents have never been
produced, nor has any evidence ever yet been given that they came in possession
of the thirty-third degree in a regular and lawful manner (pp. 92, 95, 96).

That an American Rite, thus
spuriously organized, declines to acknowledge the Patent of an English Sovereign
Sanctuary, duly recognized by the Grand Orient of France, does not at all
invalidate my claim to Masonic honours. As well might Protestants refuse to call
the Dominicans Christians, because they—the Protestants—broke away from the
Catholic Church and set up for themselves, as for A. and A. Masons of America to
deny the validity of a Patent from an English A. and P. Rite body. Though I have
nothing to do with American modern Masonry, and do not expect to have, yet,
feeling highly honoured by the distinction conferred upon me by Brother Yarker,
I mean to stand for my chartered rights, and to recognize no other authority
than that of the high Masons of England, who have been pleased to send me this
unsolicited and unexpected testimonial of their approval of my humble labours.

Of a piece with the above is
the ignorant rudeness of certain critics who pronounce Cagliostro an “impostor”
and his desire of engrafting Eastern Philosophy upon Western Masonry
“charlatanism.” Without such a union Western Masonry is a corpse without a soul.
As Yarker observes, in his Notes on the Mysteries of Antiquity:

As the Masonic fraternity is now governed, the Craft is becoming a storehouse of
paltry Masonic emperors and other charlatans, who swindle their brothers, and
feather their nests out of the aristocratic pretensions which they have tacked
on to our institutions—ad captanduin vulgus.

Respectfully,

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

VIEWS OF THE THEOSOPHISTS

[From the London
Spiritualist.]

PERMIT a humble Theosophist to
appear for the first time in your columns, to say a few words in defence of our
beliefs. I see in your issue of December 21St ultimo, one of your
correspondents, Mr. J. Croucher, makes the following very bold assertions:

Had the Theosophists
thoroughly comprehended the nature of the soul and spirit, and its relation to
the body, they would have known that if the soul once leaves, it leaves for
ever.

This is so ambiguous that,
unless he uses the term “soul” to designate only the vital principle, I can
only suppose that he falls into the common error of calling the astral body,
spirit, and the immortal essence, “soul.” We Theosophists, as Col. Olcott has
told you, do vice versa.

Besides the unwarranted
imputation on us of ignorance, Mr. Croucher has an idea (peculiar to himself)
that the problem which has heretofore taxed the powers of the metaphysicians in
all ages has been solved in our own. It is hardly to be supposed that
Theosophists or any others “thoroughly” comprehend the nature of the soul and
spirit, and their relation to the body. Such an achievement is for Omniscience,
and we Theosophists treading the path worn by the footsteps of the old Sages in
the moving sands of exoteric philosophy, can only hope to approximate to the
absolute truth. It is really more than doubtful whether Mr. Croucher can do
better, even though an “inspirational medium,’’ and experienced ‘‘through
constant sittings with one of the best trance mediums” in your country. I may
well leave to time and Spiritual Philosophy to entirely vindicate us in the far
here after. When any Œdipus of this or the next century shall have solved this
eternal enigma of the Sphinx—man, every modern dogma, not excepting some pets
of the Spiritualists, will be swept away, as the Theban monster, according to
the legend, leaped from his promontory into the sea, and was seen no more.

133———————————————————VIEWS OF THE THEOSOPHISTS.

As early as February 8th,
1876, your learned correspondent, “M.A. Oxon.,” took occasion, in an article
entitled “Soul and Spirit,” to point out the frequent confusion of the terms by
other writers. As things are no better now, I will take the opportunity to show
how surely Mr. Croucher, and many other Spiritualists of whom he may be taken as
the spokesman, misapprehend Col. Olcott’s meaning and the views of the New York
Theosophists. Col. Olcott neither affirmed nor dreamed of implying that the
immortal spirit leaves the body to produce the medial displays. And yet Mr.
Croucher evidently thinks he did, for the word “spirit” to him means the inner,
astral man, or double. Here is what Col. Olcott did say, double commas and all:

That
mediumistic physical phenomena are not produced by pure spirits, but by “souls”
embodied or disembodied,
and usually with the help of Elementals.

Any intelligent reader must
perceive that, in placing the word “souls” in quotation marks, the writer
indicated that he was using it in a sense not his own. As a Theosophist, he
would more properly and philosophically have said for himself “astral spirits”
or “astral men,” or doubles. Hence, the criticism is wholly without even a foundation of plausibility. I wonder that a man could be found who, on so frail a
basis, would have attempted so sweeping a denunciation. As it is, our President
only propounded the trine of man, like the ancient and Oriental Philosophers and
their worthy imitator Paul, who held that the physical corporeity, the flesh and
blood, was permeated and so kept alive by the Psuche, the soul or astral body.
This doctrine, that man is trine—spirit or Nous, soul and body—was taught by
the Apostle of the Gentiles more broadly and clearly than it has been by any of
his Christian successors (see i Thess., V. 23). But having evidently forgotten
or neglected to “thoroughly” study the transcendental opinions of the ancient
Philosophers and the Christian Apostle upon the subject, Mr. Croucher views the
soul (Psuche) as spirit (Nous) and vice versa.

The Buddhists, who separate
the three entities in man (though viewing them as one when on the path to
Nirvana), yet divide the soul into several parts, and have names for each of
these and their functions. Thus confusion is unknown among them. The old Greeks
did likewise, holding that Psuche was bios, or physical life, and it was
thumos,
or passional nature, the animals being accorded but the lower faculty of the
soul instinct. The soul or Psuche is itself a combination, consensus or unity of
the bios, or physical vitality, the epithumia or concupiscible nature, and the
phrén,
mens or mind. Perhaps the animus

134——————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

ought to be included. It is
constituted of ethereal substance, which pervades the whole universe, and is
derived wholly from the soul of the world—Anima Mundi or the Buddhist Svabhâvat—which
is not spirit; though intangible and impalpable, it is yet, by comparison with
spirit or pure abstraction, objective matter. By its complex nature, the soul
may descend and ally itself so closely to the corporeal nature as to exclude a
higher life from exerting any moral influence upon it. On the other hand, it can
so closely attach itself to the Nous or spirit, as to share its potency, in
which case its vehicle, physical man, will appear as a God even during his
terrestrial life. Unless such union of soul and spirit does occur, either during
this life or after physical death, the individual man is not immortal as an
entity. The Psuche is sooner or later disintegrated. Though the man may have
gained “the whole world,” he has lost his “soul.” Paul, when teaching the
anastasis, or continuation of individual spiritual life after death, set forth
that there was a physical body which was raised in incorruptible substance.

The spiritual body is most
assuredly not one of the bodies, or visible or tangible larvre, which form in
circle-rooms, and are so improperly termed “materialized spirits.” When once the
metanoia,, the full developing of spiritual life, has lifted the spiritual body
out of the psychical (the disembodied, corruptible, astral man, what Col.
Olcott calls “soul”), it becomes, in strict ratio with its progress, more and
more an abstraction for the corporeal senses. It can influence, inspire, and
even communicate with men subjectively; it can make itself felt, and even, in
those rare instances when the clairvoyant is perfectly pure and perfectly lucid,
be seen by the inner eye (which is the eye of the purified Psuche—soul). But how
can it ever manifest objectively?

It will be seen, then, that to
apply the term “spirit” to the materialized eldola of your
“form-manifestations” is grossly improper, and something ought to be done to
change the practice, since scholars have begun to discuss the subject. At best,
when not what the Greeks termed phantasma, they are but phasma or apparitions.

In scholars, speculators, and
especially in our modern savants, the psychical principle is more or less
pervaded by the corporeal, and “the things of the spirit are foolishness and
impossible to be known” (i Cor., ii. 14). Plato was then right, in his way, in
despising land measuring, geometry and arithmetic, for all these overlooked all
high ideas. Plutarch taught that at death Proserpine separated the body

135———————————————————VIEWS OF THE THEOSOPHISTS.

and the soul entirely, after
which the latter became a free and independent demon (daimon). Afterward the
good underwent a second dissolution: Demeter divided the Psuche from the Nous
or Pneuma. The former was dissolved after a time into ethereal particles—hence
the inevitable dissolution and subsequent annihilation of the man who at death
is purely psychical; the latter, the Nous, ascended to its higher divine power
and became gradually a pure, divine spirit. Kapila, in common with all Eastern
Philosophers, despised the purely psychical nature. It is this agglomeration of
the grosser particles of the soul, the mesmeric exhalations of human nature
imbued with all its terrestrial desires and propensities, its vices,
imperfections and weakness, forming the astral body, which can become objective
under certain circumstances, which the Buddhists call the Skandhas (the groups),
and Col. Olcott has for convenience termed the “soul.” The Buddhists and
Brâhmans teach that the man’s individuality is not secured until he has passed
through and become disembarrassed of the last of these groups, the final vestige
of earthly taint. Hence their doctrine of metempsychosis, so ridiculed and so
utterly misunderstood by our greatest Orientalists.

Even the physicists teach us
that the particles composing physical man are, by evolution, reworked by nature
into every variety of inferior physical form. Why, then, are the Buddhists
unphilosophical or even unscientific, in affirming that the semi-material
Skandhas of the astral man (his very ego, up to the point of final purification)
are appropriated to the evolution of minor astral forms (which, of course,
enter into the purely physical bodies of animals) as fast as he throws them off
in his progress toward Nirvana? Therefore, we may correctly say, that so long as
the disembodied man is throwing off a single particle of these Skandhas, a
portion of him is being reincarnated in the bodies of plants and animals. And if
he, the disembodied astral man, be so material that “Demeter” cannot find even
one spark of the Pneuma to carry up to the “divine power,” then the individual,
so to speak, is dissolved, piece by piece, into the crucible of evolution, or,
as the Hindus allegorically illustrate it, he passes thousands of years in the
bodies of impure animals. Here we see how completely the ancient Greek and Hindu
Philosophers, the modern Oriental schools, and the Theosophists, are ranged on
one side, in perfect accord, and the bright array of “inspirational mediums” and
“spirit guides” stand in perfect discord on the other. Though no two of the
latter, unfortunately,

136——————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

agree as to what is and what
is not truth, yet they do agree with unanimitv to antagonize whatever of the
teachings of the Philosophers we may repeat.

Let it not be inferred,
though, from this, that I, or any other real Theosophist, undervalue true
spiritual phenomena or philosophy, or that we do not believe in the
communication between mortals and pure Spirits, any less than we do in
communication between bad men and bad Spirits, or even of good men with bad
Spirits under bad conditions. Occultism is the essence of Spiritualism, while
modern or popular Spiritualism I cannot better characterize than as adulterated
unconscious Magic. We go so far as to say that all the great and noble
characters, all the grand geniuses, the poets, painters, sculptors, musicians,
all who have worked at any time for the realization of their highest ideal,
irrespective of selfish ends—have been spiritually inspired; not mediums, as
many Spiritualists call them—passive tools in the hands of controlling
guides—but incarnate, illuminated souls, working consciously in collaboration
with the pure disembodied human and new-embodied high Planetary Spirits, for the
elevation and spiri-tualization of mankind. We believe that everything in
material life is most intimately associated with spiritual agencies. As regards
physical phenomena and mediumship, we believe that it is only when the passive
medium has given place, or rather grown into, the conscious mediator, that he
discerns between Spirits good and bad. And we do believe, and know also, that
while the incarnate man (though the highest Adept) cannot vie in potency with
the pure disembodied Spirits, who, freed of all their Skandhas, have become
subjective to the physical senses, yet he can perfectly equal, and can far
surpass in the way of phenomena, mental or physical, the average “Spirit” of
modern mediumship. Believing this, you will perceive that we are better
Spiritualists, in the true acceptation of the word, than so-called
Spiritualists, who, instead of showing the reverence we do to true
Spirits—Gods—debase the name of Spirit by applying it to the impure, or at best,
imperfect beings who produce the majority of the phenomena.

The two objections urged by
Mr. Croucher against the claim of the Theosophists, that a child is but a
duality at birth, “and perhaps until the sixth or seventh year,” and that some
depraved persons are annihilated at some time after death, are (1) the mediums
have described to him his three children “who passed away at the respective ages
of two,

137———————————————————VIEWS OF THE THEOSOPHISTS.

four, and six years”; and (2)
that he has known persons who were “very depraved” on earth come back. He says:

These statements have been
afterwards confirmed by glorious beings who came after, and who have proved by
their mastery of the laws which are governing the universe, that they are worthy
of being believed.

I am really happy to hear that
Mr. Croucher is competent to sit in judgment upon these “glorious beings,” and
give them the palm over Kapila, Manu, Plato, and even Paul. It is worth
something, after all, to be an “inspirational medium.” We have no such “glorious
beings” in the Theosophical Society to learn from; but it is evident that while
Mr. Croucher sees and judges things through his emotional nature, the
Philosophers whom we study took nothing from any “glorious being” that did not
perfectly accord with the universal harmony, justice, and equilibrium of the
manifested plan of the Universe. The Hermetic axiom, “as below, so above,” is
the only rule of evidence accepted by the Theosophists. Believing in a spiritual
and invisible Universe, we cannot conceive of it in any other way than as
completely dovetailing and corresponding with the material, objective Universe;
for logic and observation alike teach us that the latter is the outcome and
visible manifestation of the former, and that the laws governing both are
immutable.

In this letter of Dec. 7th
Colonel Olcott very appropriately illustrates his subject of potential
immortality by citing the admitted physical law of the survival of the fittest.
The rule applies to the greatest as to the smallest things, to the planet
equally with the plant. It applies to man. And the imperfectly developed
man-child can no more exist under the conditions prepared for the perfected
types of its species, than can an imperfect plant or animal. In infantile life
the higher faculties are not developed, but, as everyone knows, are only in the
germ, or rudimentary. The babe is an animal, however “angelic” he may, and
naturally enough ought to, appear to his parents. Be it ever so beautifully
modelled, the infant body is but the jewel-casket preparing for the jewel. It is
bestial, selfish, and, as a babe, nothing more. Little of even the soul, Psuche,
can be perceived except so far as vitality is concerned; hunger, terror, pain
and pleasure appear to be the principal of its conceptions. A kitten is its
superior in everything but possibilities. The grey neurine of the brain is
equally unformed. After a time mental qualities begin to appear, but they relate
chiefly to external matters. The cultivation of the mind of the child by
teachers

138——————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

can only affect this part of
the nature—what Paul calls natural or physical, and James and Jude sensual or
psychical. Hence the words of Jude, “psychical, having not the spirit,” and of
Paul:

The psychical man receiveth
not the things of the spirit, for to him they are foolishness; the spiritual
man discerneth.

It is only the man of full
age, with his faculties disciplined to discern good and evil, whom we can
denominate spiritual, noetic, intuitive. Children developed in such respects
would be precocious, abnormal abortions.

Why, then, should a child who
has never lived other than an animal life; who never discerned right from wrong;
who never cared whether he lived or died—since he could not understand either of
life or death—become individually immortal?
Man’s cycle is not complete until he has passed through the earth-life. No one
stage of probation and experience can be skipped over. He must he a man before
he can become a Spirit. A dead child is a failure of nature—he must live again;
and the same Psuche reenters the physical plane through another birth. Such
cases, together with those of congenital idiots, are, as stated in Isis
Unveiled, the only instances of human reincarnation. If every child-duality
were to be immortal, why deny a like individual immortality to the duality of
the animal? Those who believe in the trinity of man know the babe to be but a
duality—body and soul—and the individuality which resides only in the psychical
is, as we have seen proved by the Philosophers, perishable. The completed
trinity only survives. Trinity, I say, for at death the astral form becomes the
outward body, and inside a still finer one evolves, which takes the place of the
Psuche on earth, and the whole is more or less overshadowed by the Nous. Space
prevented Col. Olcott from developing the doctrine more fully, or he would have
added that not even all of the Elementaries (human) are annihilated. There is
still a chance for some. By a supreme struggle these may retain their third and
higher principle, and so, though slowly and painfully, yet ascend sphere after
sphere, casting off at each transition the previous heavier garment, and
clothing themselves in more radiant spiritual envelopes, until, rid of every
finite particle, the trinity merges into the final Nirvana, and becomes a
unity—a God.

A volume would scarce suffice
to enumerate all the varieties of Ele-—————* [Note that ‘reincarnation” is here used as a
term applying only to the Psuche. This does not reincarnate, it has always
been taught, except in the instances given.—Ens.]

139———————————————————VIEWS OF THE THEOSOPHISTS.

mentaries and Elementals; the
former being so called by some Kabalists (Henry Kunrath, for instance) to
indicate their entanglement in the terrestrial elements which hold them captive,
and the latter designated by that name to avoid confusion, and equally applying
to those which go to form the astral body of the infant and to the stationary
Nature Spirits proper. Eliphas Levi, however, indifferently calls them all
“Elementary” and “souls.” I repeat again, it is but the wholly psychical
disembodied astral man which ultimately disappears as an individual entity. As
to the component parts of his Psuche, they are as indestructible as the atoms of
any other body composed of matter.

The man must indeed be a true
animal who has not, after death, a spark of the divine Ruach or Nous left in him
to allow him a chance of self-salvation. Yet there are such lamentable
exceptions, not alone among the depraved, but also among those who, during life,
by stifling every idea of an after existence, have killed in themselves the last
desire to achieve immortality. It is the will of man, his all-potent will, that
weaves his destiny, and if a man is determined in the notion that death means
annihilation, he will find it so. It is among our commonest experiences that the
determination of physical life or death depends upon the will. Some people
snatch themselves by force of determination from the very jaws of death, while
others succumb to insignificant maladies. What man does with his body he can do
with his disembodied Psuche.

Nothing in this militates
against the images of Mr. Croucher’s children being seen in the Astral Light by
the medium, either as actually left by the children themselves, or as imagined
by the father to look when grown. The impression in the latter case would be but
a phasma, while in the former it is a phantasma, or the apparition of the
indestructible impress of what once really was.

In days of old the “mediators”
of humanity were men like Christna, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Apollonius of
Tyana, Plotinus, Porphyry, and the like of them. They were Adepts,
Philosophers—men who, by struggling their whole lives in purity, study, and
self-sacrifice, through trials, privations and self-discipline, attained divine
illumination and seemingly superhuman powers. They could not only produce all
the phenomena seen in our times, but regarded it as a sacred duty to cast out
“evil spirits,” or demons, from the unfortunates who were obsessed—in other
words, to rid the medium of their days of the “Elementaries.”

140————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

But in our time of improved
psychology every hysterical sensitive looms into a seer, and behold! there are
mediums by the thousand! Without any previous study, self-denial, or the least
limitation of their physical nature, they assume, in the capacity of mouthpieces
of unidentified and unidentifiable intelligences, to outrival Socrates in wisdom, Paul in eloquence, and Tertullian himself in fiery and authoritative
dogmatism. The Theosophists are the last to assume infallibility for themselves,
or recognize it in others; as they judge others, so they are willing to be
judged.

In the name, then, of logic
and common sense, before bandying epithets, let us submit our difference to the
arbitrament of reason. Let us compare all things, and, putting aside
emotionalism and prejudice as unworthy of the logician and the experimentalist,
hold fast only to that which passes the ordeal of ultimate analysis.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, Jan. 14th 1878.

A SOCIETY WITHOUT A DOGMA—————

[From the London
Spiritualist Feb.
8th, 1878.]

TIMES have greatly changed
since the winter of 1875-6, when the establishment of the Theosophical Society
caused the grand army of American Spiritualists to wave banners, clang steel,
and set up a great shouting. How well we all remember the putting forth of
“Danger Signals,” the oracular warnings and denunciations of numberless mediums!
How fresh in memory the threats of “angel-friends” to Dr. Gardiner, of Boston
that they would kill Colonel Olcott if he dared call them “Elementaries” in the
lectures he was about delivering! The worst of the storm has passed. The hail
of imprecations no longer batters around our devoted heads; it is raining now,
and we can almost see the rainbow of promised peace spanning the sky.

Beyond doubt, much of this
subsidence of the disturbed elements is due to our armed neutrality. But still I
judge that the gradual spread of a desire to learn something more as to the
cause of the phenomena must be taken into account. And yet the time has not
quite come when the lion (Spiritualism) and the lamb (Theosophy) are ready to
lie down together—unless the lamb is willing to lie inside the lion. While we
held our tongues we were asked to speak, and when we spoke—or rather our
President spoke—the hue and cry was raised once more. Though the pop-gun
fusillade and the dropping shots of musketry have mostly ceased, the defiles of
your spiritual Balkans are defended by your heaviest Krupp guns. If the fire
were directed only against Colonel Olcott there would be no occasion for me to
bring up the reserves. But fragments from both of the bombs which your able
gunner, and our mutual friend, ‘‘M.A. Oxon.’’ has exploded, in his two letters
‘of January 4th and 11th have given me contusions. Under the velvet paw of his
rhetoric I have felt the scratch of challenge.

At the very beginning of what
must be a long struggle, it is imperatively demanded that the Theosophical
position shall be unequivo-

142 A MODERN PANARION.

cally defined. In the last of
the above two communications, it is stated that Colonel Olcott transmits “the
teaching of the learned author of Isis Unveiled”—the “master key to all
problems.” (?)

Who has ever claimed that the
book was that, or anything like it? Not the author, certainly. The title? A
misnomer for which the publisher is unpremeditatedly responsible, and, if I am
not mistaken, “MA. Oxon.” knows it. My title was The Veil of Isis, and that head
line runs through the entire first volume. Not until that volume was stereotyped
did anyone recollect that a book of the same name was before the public. Then,
as a derniere ressource, the publisher selected the present title.

“If he [Olcott] be not the rose, at
any rate he has lived near it,” says your learned correspondent. Had I seen this
sentence apart from the context, I would never have imagined that the
unattractive old party, superficially known as H. P. Blavatsky, was designated
under this poetical Persian simile. If he had compared me to a bramble- bush, I
might have complimented him upon his artistic realism. He says:

Colonel Olcott of
himself
would command attention; he commands it still more on account of the store of
knowledge to which he has had access.

True, he has had such access,
but by no means is it confined to my humble self. Though I may have taught him a
few of the things that I had learned in other countries (and corroborated the
theory in every case by practical illustration), yet a far abler teacher than I
could not in three brief years have given him more than the alphabet of what
there is to learn, before a man can become wise in spiritual and psycho
physiological things. The very limitations of modern languages prevent any rapid
communication of ideas about Eastern Philosophy. I defy the great Max Muller
himself to translate Kapila’s Sutras so as to give their real meaning. We have
seen what the best European authorities can do with the Hindu metaphysics; and
what a mess they have made of it, to be sure! The Colonel corresponds directly
with Hindu scholars, and has from them a good deal more than he can get from so
clumsy a preceptor as myself.

Our friend, “M.A. Oxon.,” says
that Colonel Olcott “comes forward to enlighten us’’—than which scarce anything
could be more inaccurate. He neither comes forward, nor pretends to enlighten
anyone. The public wanted to know the views of the Theosophists, and our
President attempted to give, as succinctly as possible in the limits of a

143———————————————————A
SOCIETY WITHOUT A DOGMA.

single article, some little
glimpse of so much of the truth as he had learned. That the result would not be
wholly satisfactory was inevitable. Volumes would not suffice to answer all the
questions naturally presenting themselves to an enquiring mind; a library of
quartos would barely obliterate the prejudices of those who ride at the anchor
of centuries of metaphysical and theological misconceptions—perhaps even errors.
But, though our President is not guilty of the conceit of “pretending to
enlighten” Spiritualists, I think he has certainly thrown out some hints worthy
of the thoughtful consideration of the unprejudiced.

I am sorry that “M.A. Oxon.”
is not content with mere suggestions. Nothing but the whole naked truth will
satisfy him. We must “square” our theories with his facts, we must lay our
theory down “on exact lines of demonstration.” We are asked:

Where are the seers? What are
their records? And, far more important, how do they verify them to Us?

I answer: Seers are where
“Schools of the Prophets” are still extant, and they have their records with
them. Though Spiritualists are not able to go in search of them, yet the
Philosophy they teach commends itself to logic, and, its principles are
mathematically demonstrable. If this be not so, let it be shown.

But, in their turn,
Theosophists may ask, and do ask.: Where are the proofs that the medial
phenomena are exclusively attributable to the agency of departed “Spirits”? Who
are the “Seers” among mediums blessed with an infallible lucidity? What “tests”
are given that admit of no alternative explanation? Though Swedenborg was one of the
greatest of Seers, and churches are erected in his name, yet except to his
adherents what proof is there that the “Spirits” objective to his
vision—including Paul—promenading in hats, were anything but the creatures of
his imagination? Are the spiritual potentialities of the living man so well
comprehended that mediums can tell when their own agency ceases, and that of
outside influence begins? No; but for all answer to our suggestions that the
subject is open to debate, “M.A. Oxon.” shudderingly charges us with attempting
to upset what he designates as “a cardinal dogma of our faith,” i.e., the faith
of the Spiritualists. Dogma? Faith? These are the
right and left pillars of every soul crushing Theology. Theosophists have no
dogmas, exact no blind faith. Theosophists are ever ready to abandon every idea
that is

144———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

proved erroneous upon strictly
logical deductions; let Spiritualists do the same. Dogmas are the toys that
amuse, and can satisfy but, unreasoning children. They are the offspring of
human speculation and prejudiced fancy. In the eye of true Philosophy it seems
an insult to common sense, that we should break loose from the idols and dogmas
of either Christian or heathen exoteric faith to catch up those of a church of
Spiritualism. Spiritualism must either be a true Philosophy, amenable to the
test of the recognized criterion of logic, or be set up in its niche beside the
broken idols of hundreds of antecedent Christian sects.

Realizing, as they do, the
boundlessness of the absolute truth, Theosophists repudiate all claim to
infallibility. The most cherished preconceptions, the most “pious hope,” the
strongest “ master passion,” they sweep aside like dust from their path, when
their error is pointed out. Their highest hope is to approximate to the truth;
that they have succeeded in going a few steps beyond the Spiritualists, they
think proved in their conviction that they know nothing in comparison with what
is to be learned; in their sacrifice of every pet theory and prompting of
emotionalism at the shrine of fact; and in their absolute and unqualified
repudiation of everything that smacks of “dogma.”

With great rhetorical
elaboration “M.A. Oxon.” paints the result of the supersedure of spiritualistic
by Theosophic ideas. In brief, he shows Spiritualism a lifeless corpse:

A body from which the soul has
been wrenched, and for which most men will care nothing.

We submit that the reverse is
true. Spiritualists wrench the soul from true Spiritualism by their degradation
of Spirit. Of the in they make the finite; of the divine subjective they make
the human and limited objective. Are Theosophists Materialists? Do not their
hearts warm with the same “pure and holy love” for their “loved ones” as those
of Spiritualists? Have not many of us sought long years “through the gate of
mediumship to have access to the world of Spirit”—and vainly sought? The comfort
and assurance modern Spiritualism could not give us we found in Theosophy. As a
result we believe far more firmly than many Spiritualists—for our belief is
based on knowledge—in the communion of our beloved ones with us; but not as
materialized Spirits with beating hearts and sweating brows.

Holding such views as we do as
to logic and fact, you perceive that when a Spiritualist pronounces to us the
words dogma and fact, debate

145———————————————————A SOCIETY WITHOUT A DOGMA.

is impossible, for there is no
common ground upon which we can meet. We decline to break our heads against
shadows. If fact and logic were given the consideration they should have, there
would be no more temples in this world for exoteric worship, whether Christian
or heathen, and the method of the Theosophists would be welcomed as the only one
insuring action and progress—a progress that cannot be arrested, since each
advance shows yet greater advances to be made.

As to our
producing our “Seers” and “their records”—one word. In The Spiritulist of Jan.
11th, I find
Dr. Peebles saying that in due time he

Will publish such facts about
the Dravida Brâhmans as I am [he is] permitted. I say permitted, because some
of these occurred under the promise and seal of secrecy.

If even the casual wayfarer is
put under an obligation of secrecy before he is shown some of the less important
psycho-physiological phenomena, is it not barely possible that the Brotherhood
to which some Theosophists belong has also doctrines, records, and phenomena,
that cannot be revealed to the profane and the indifferent, without any
imputation lying against their reality and authoritativeness? This, at least, I
believe, “M.A. Oxon.” knows. As we do not offensively obtrude ourselves upon an
unwilling public, but only answer under compulsion, we can hardly be denounced
as contumacious if we produce to a promiscuous public neither our “Seers” nor
“their records.” When Mohammed is ready to go to the mountain, it will be found
standing in its place.

And that no one that makes
this search may suppose that we Theosophists send him to a place where there
are no pitfalls for the unwary, I quote from the famous commentary on the
Bhagavad Gita of our brother Hurrychund Chintamon, the unqualified admission
that,

In Hindustau, as in England,
there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat
for men, and milk for babes; facts for the few, and fictions for the many;
realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the
philosopher, and exoteric fable for the fool.

Like the Philosophy taught by
this author in the work in question, the object of the Theosophical Society “is
the cleansing of spiritual truth.”

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, Jan. 20th, 1877.

ELEMENTARIES—————

[From The Religio-Philosophical
Journal, Nov. 17th, 1877.]

I PERCEIVE that of late the
ostracized subject of the Kabalistic “Elementaries” is beginning to appear in
the orthodox spiritualistic papers pretty often. No wonder; Spiritualism and its
Philosophy are progressing, and they will progress despite the opposition of
some very learned ignoramuses, who imagine the Cosmos rotates within the
academic brain. But if a new term is once admitted for discussion, the least we
can do is to first clearly ascertain what that term means. We students of the
Oriental Philosophy count it a clear gain that spiritualistic journals on both
sides of the Atlantic are beginning to discuss the subject of sub-human and
earth-bound beings, even though they ridicule the idea. But do those who
ridicule know what they are talking about, having never studied the Kabalistic
writers? It is evident to me that they are confounding the
“Elementaries”—disembodied, vicious, and earth-bound, yet human Spirits—with
the “Elementals,” or Nature Spirits.

With your permission, then, I
will answer an article by Dr. Woldrich which appeared in your Journal of the 2th
inst., and to which the author gives the title of “Elementaries.” I freely admit
that, owing to my imperfect knowledge of English at the time I first wrote upon
the Elementaries, I may have myself contributed to the present confusion, and
thus brought upon my doomed head the wrath of Spiritualists, mediums, and their
“guides” into the bargain. But now I will attempt to make my meaning clear.
Eliphas Levi applies the term “Elementary” equally to earth-bound human Spirits
and to the creatures of the elements. This carelessness on his part is due to
the fact that as the human Elementaries are considered by the Kabalists as
having irretrievably lost every chance of immortality, they therefore, after a
certain period of time, become no better than the “Elementals,” who never had
any souls at all. To disentangle the subject, I have, in my

147———————————————————————ELEMENTARIES.

Isis Unveiled, shown that the
former should, alone, be called “Elementaries” and the latter “Elementals”
(vol. i. p. xxx. “Before the Veil”).

Dr. Woldrich, in imitation of
Herbert Spencer, attempts to explain the existence of a popular belief in Nature
Spirits, demons and mythological deities, as the effect of an imagination
untutored by Science, and wrought upon by misunderstood natural phenomena. He
attributes the legendary Sylphs, Undines, Salamanders and Gnomes—four great
families, which include numberless sub-divisions—to mere fancy; going however
to the extreme of affirming that by long practice one can acquire

That power which disembodied
spirits have of materializing apparitions by the will.

Granted that “disembodied
Spirits” have sometimes that power; but if disembodied why not embodied Spirits
also, i.e., a yet living person who has become an Adept in Occultism through
study? According to Dr. Woldrich’s theory, an embodied Spirit or Magician can
create only subjectively, or to quote his words:

He is in the habit of
summoning, that is, bringing up to his imagination, his familiar spirits, which,
having responded to his will, he considers as real existences.

I will not stop to enquire for
the proofs of this assertion, for it would only lead to an endless discussion.
If many thousands of Spiritualists in Europe and America have seen materialized
objective forms which assure them they were the Spirits of once living persons,
millions of Eastern people throughout the past ages have seen the Hierophants of
the Temples, and even now see them in India, without being in the least mediums,
also evoking objective and tangible forms, which display no pretensions to being
the souls of disembodied men. But I will only remark that, though subjective and
invisible to others, as Dr. Woldrich tells us, these forms are palpable, hence
objective to the clairvoyant; no scientist has yet mastered the mysteries of
even the physical sciences sufficiently to enable him to contradict, with
anything like plausible or incontrovertible proofs, the assumption that because
the clairvoyant sees a form remaining subjective to others, this form is
nevertheless neither a “hallucination” nor a fiction of the imagination. Were
the persons present endowed with the same clairvoyant faculty, they would every
one of them see this creature of “hallucination” as well; hence there would be
sufficient proof that it had an objective existence. And this is how the
experiments are conducted in certain psychological training schools, as I call
such establishments in the East. One clair-

148————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

voyant is never trusted. The
person may be honest, truthful, and have the greatest desire to learn only that
which is real, and yet mix the truth unconsciously and accept an Elemental for a
disembodied Spirit, and vice versa. For instance, what guarantee can Dr. Woldrich give us that “Hoki” and “Thalla,” the guides of Miss May Shaw, were
not simply creatures produced by the power of the imagination? This gentleman
may have the word of his clairvoyant for this; he may implicitly and very
deservedly trust her honesty when in her normal state; but the fact alone that a
medium is a passive and docile instrument in the hands of some invisible and
mysterious powers, ought to make her irresponsible in the eves of every serious
investigator. It is the Spirit, or these invisible powers, he has to test, not
the clairvoyant; and what proof has he of their trustworthiness that he should
think himself warranted in coming out as the opponent of a Philosophy based on
thousands of years of practical experience, the iconoclast of experiments
performed by whole generations of learned Egyptians, Hierophants, Gurus,
Brâhmans, Adepts of the Sanctuaries, and a whole host of more or less learned
Kabalists, who were all trained Seers? Such an accusation, moreover, is
dangerous ground for the Spiritualists them selves. Admit once that a Magician
creates his forms only in fancy, and as a result of hallucination, and what
becomes of all the guides, spirit friends and the tutti quanti from the sweet
“Summer Land,” crowding around the trance mediums and Seers? Why these would-be
disembodied entities are to be considered more identified with humanity than the
Elementals, or as Dr. Woldrich terms them, “Elementaries,” of the Magician, is
something which would scarcely bear investigation.

From the standpoint of certain
Buddhist Schools, your correspondent may be right. Their Philosophy teaches
that even our visible Universe assumed an objective form as a result of the
fancy followed by the volition or the will of the Unknown and Supreme Adept,
differing, however, from Christian theology, inasmuch as they teach that
instead of calling out our Universe from nothingness, He had to exercise His
will upon preexisting Matter, eternal and indestructible as to invisible
Substance, though temporary and ever-changing as to forms. Some higher and still
more subtle metaphysical Schools of Nepaul even go so far as to affirm—on very
reasonable grounds, too—that this preexisting and self-existent Substance or
Matter (Svabhâvat) is itself without any other creator or ruler; when in the
state of activity it is Pravritti, a universal creating principle; when latent
and passive they

149———————————————————————ELEMENTARIES.

call this force Nirvritti. As
for something eternal and infinite, for that which had neither beginning nor end
there can be neither past nor future, but everything that was and will be, Is;
therefore there never was an action or even thought, however simple, that is not
impressed in imperishable records on this Substance, called by the Buddhists
Svabhâvat, by the Kabalists Astral Light. As in a faithful mirror, this Light
reflects every image, and no human imagination could see any thing outside that
which exists impressed somewhere on the eternal Substance. To imagine that a
human brain can conceive of anything that was never conceived of before by the
“universal brain,” is a fallacy and a conceited presumption. At best, the former can catch
now and then stray glimpses of the “Eternal Thought” after this has assumed some objective form, either in the world of the invisible, or visible,
Universe. Hence the unanimous testimony of trained Seers goes to prove that
there are such creatures as the Elementals; and that though the Elementaries
have been at some time human Spirits, they, having lost every connection with
the purer immortal world, must be recognized by some special term which would
draw a distinct line of demarcation between them and the true and genuine
disembodied souls, winch have henceforth to remain immortal. To the Kabalists
and the Adepts, especially in India, the difference between the two is
all-important, and their tutored minds will never allow them to mistake the one
for the other; to the untutored medium they are all one.

Spiritualists have never
accepted the suggestion and sound advice of certain of their seers and mediums.
They have regarded Dr. Peebles’ “Gadarenes” with indifference; they have
shrugged their shoulders at the “Rosicrucian” fantasies of P. B. Randolph, and
his Ravalette has made none of them the wiser; they have frowned and grumbled at
A. Jackson Davis’ “Diakka”; and finally, lifting high the banner, have declared
a murderous war of extermination against the Theosophists and Kabalists. What
are now the results?

A series of exposures of
fraudulent mediums that have brought mortification to their endorsers and
dishonour upon the cause; identification by genuine seers and mediums of
pretended Spirit-forms that were afterwards found to be mere personations by
lying cheats, go to prove that in such instances at least, outside of clear
cases of confederacy, the identifications were due to illusion on the part of
the said seers; spirit-babes discovered to be battered masks and bundles of
rags; obsessed mediums driven by their guides to drunkenness and immor-

150————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

ality of conduct; the
practices of free-love endorsed and even prompted by alleged immortal Spirits;
sensitive believers forced to the commission of murder, suicide, forgery,
embezzlement and other crimes; the over-credulous led to waste their substance
in foolish investments and the search after hidden treasures; mediums fostering
ruinous speculations in stocks; free-loveites parted from their wives in search
of other female affinities; two continents flooded with the vilest slanders,
spoken and sometimes printed by mediums against other mediums; incubi and
succubi entertained as returning angel-husbands or wives; mountebanks and jugglers
protected by scientists and the clergy, and gathering large audiences to witness
imitations of the phenomena of cabinets, the reality of which genuine mediums
themselves and Spirits are powerless to vindicate by giving the necessary test
conditions; seances still held in Stygian darkness, where even genuine phenomena
can readily be mistaken for the false, and false for the real; mediums left
helpless by their angel guides, tried, convicted, and sent to prison, and no
attempt made to save them from their fate by those who, if they are Spirits
having the power of controlling mortal affairs, ought to have enlisted the
sympathy of the heavenly hosts on behalf of their mediums in the face of such
crying injustice; other faithful spiritualistic lecturers and mediums broken
down in health and left unsupported by those calling themselves their patrons
and protectors—such are some of the features of the present situation; the black
spots of what ought to become the grandest and noblest of all religious
Philosophies freely thrown by the unbelievers and Materialists into the teeth of
every Spiritualist. No intelligent person of the latter class need go outside of
his own personal experience to find examples like the above. Spiritualism has
not progressed and is not progressing and will not progress, until its facts are
viewed in the light of the Oriental Philosophy.

Thus, Mr. Editor, your
esteemed correspondent, Dr. Woldrich, may be found guilty of an erroneous
proposition. In the concluding sentence of his article he says:

I know not whether I have
succeeded in proving the Elementary a myth, but at least I hope that I have
thrown some more light upon the subject to some of the readers of the journal.

To this I would answer: (1) He
has not proved at all the “Elementary a myth,” since the Elementaries are, with
a few exceptions, the earth-bound guides and Spirits in which he believes,
together with every other Spiritualist. (2) Instead of throwing light upon the
subject,

151——————————————————————ELEMENTARIES.

the Doctor has but darkened it
the more. (3) Such explanations and careless exposures do the greatest harm to the
future of Spiritualism, and greatly serve to retard its progress by teaching its
adherents that they have nothing more to learn.

Sincerely hoping that I have
not trespassed too much on the columns of your esteemed journal, allow me to
sign myself, dear sir,

Yours respectfully,

H. P. BLAVATSKY,

Corresponding Secretary of
the
Theosophical Society.New York.

KABALISTIC VIEWS OF “SPIRITS”

[From The Religio-Philosophical Journal,
Jan. 26th, 1578.]

I MUST beg you to again allow
me a little space for the further elucidation of a very important question—that
of the “Elementals” and the “Elementaries.” It is a misfortune that our
European languages do not contain a nomenclature expressive of the various
grades and conditions of spiritual beings. But surely I cannot be blamed for
either the above linguistic deficiency, or because some people do not choose, or
are unable, to understand my meaning! I cannot too often repeat that in this
matter I claim no originality. My teachings are but the substance of what many
Kabalists have said before me, which to-day I mean to prove, with your kind
permission.

I am accused (1) of “turning
somersaults” and jumping from one idea to another. The defendant pleads—not
guilty. (2) Of coining not only words but Philosophies out of the depths of my
consciousness. Defendant enters the same plea. (3) Of having repeatedly asserted
that “intelligent Spirits other than those who have passed through an earth
experience in a human body were concerned in the manifestations known as the phenomena of Spiritualism.” True, and defendant repeats the assertion. (4) Of
having advanced, in my bold and unwarranted theories, “beyond the great Eliphas
Levi himself.” Indeed? Were I to go even as far as he (see his Science des Esprits), I would deny that a single so-called spiritual manifestation is more
than hallucination, produced by soulless Elementals, whom he calls “Elementaries” (see
Ritual de la Haute Magic).

I am asked: “What proof is
there of the existence of the Elementals?” In my turn I will enquire: “‘What
proof is there of ‘diakkas,’ ‘guides,’ ‘bands’ and ‘controls’ ?“ And yet these
terms are all current among Spiritualists. The unanimous testimony of
innumerable observers and competent experimenters furnishes the proof. If Spiritualists cannot, or will not, go to those countries where they are living

153———————————————————KABALISTIC VIEWS OF “SPIRITS.”

and these proofs are
accessible, they, at least, have no right to give the lie direct to those who
have seen both the Adepts and the proofs. My witnesses are living men teaching
and exemplifying the Philosophy of hoary ages; theirs, these very “guides” and
“controls,” who up to the present time are at best hypothetical, and whose
assertions have been repeatedly found, by Spiritualists themselves,
contradictory and false.

If my present critics insist
that since the discussion of this matter began, a disembodied soul has never
been described as an “Elementary,” I merely point to the number of the London
Spiritualist for Feb. 8th, 1876, published nearly two years ago, in which a correspondent,
who has certainly studied the Occult Sciences, says :

Is it not probable that some
of the elementary spirits of an evil type are those spirit-bodies, which, only
recently disembodied, are on the eve of an eternal dissolution, and which
continue their temporary existence only by vampirizing those still in the
flesh? They had existence; they never attained to being.

Note two things: that human
Elementaries are recognized as existing, apart from the Gnomes, Sylphs, Undines and Salamanders beings
purely elemental; and that annihilation of the
soul is regarded as potential.

Says Paracelsns, in
his Philosophia
Sagax:

The current of
Astral Light
with its peculiar inhabitants, Gnomes, Svlphs, etc., is transformed into human
light at the moment of the conception. and it becomes the first envelope of the
soul—its grosser portion; combined with the most subtle fluids, it forms the
sidereal [astral, or ethereal] phantom—the inner man.

And Eliphas Levi
:

The Astral Light is saturated
with elementary souls which it discharges in the incessant generation of beings
...At the birth of a child they influence the four temperaments of the latter:
the element of the Gnomes predominates in melanchol persons; of the
Salamanders in the sanguine; of the Undines in the phlegmatic; of the Sylphs in
the giddy and bilious.... These are the spirits which we designate under the tern
of occult elements (Rituel de la Haute Magic, vol. ii. chapter on the
‘‘Conjnration of the Four Classes of Elementary”).

‘‘Yes, yes,’’ he remarks (op.
cit., vol. i. p. 164):

These spirits of the elements
do exist. Same wandering in their spheres, others trying to incarnate
themselves, others, again, already incarnated, and living on earth. These are
vicious and imperfect men.

Note that we have here
described to us more or less “intelligent Spirits, other than those who have
passed through an earth experience in a human body.’’ If not intelligent, they
would not know how to make the attempt to incarnate themselves. Vicious
Elementals, or

154————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Elementaries, are attracted to
vicious parents; they bask in their atmosphere, and are thus afforded the
chance, by the vices of the parents, to perpetuate in the child the paternal
wickedness. The unintellectual “Elementals” are drawn in unconsciously to
themselves, and, in the order of Nature, as component parts of the grosser
astral body or soul, determine the temperament. They can as little resist as the
animalcules can avoid entering into our bodies in the water we swallow. Of a
third class, out of hundreds that the Eastern Philosophers and Kabalists are
acquainted with, Eliphas I discussing spiritistic phenomena, says:

They are neither the souls of
the damned nor guilty; the elementary spirits are like children, curious and
harmless, and torment people in proportion as attention is paid to them.

These he regards as the sole
agents in all the meaningless and useless physical phenomena at seances. Such
phenomena will be produced unless they be dominated “by wills more powerful
than their own.” Such a will may be that of a living Adept, or, as there are
none such at Western spiritual seances, these ready agents are at the disposal
of every strong, vicious, earth-bound, human Elementary who has been attracted
to the place. By such they can be used in combination with the astral emanations
of the circle and medium, as stuff out of which to make materialized Spirits.

So little does Levi concede
the possibility of Spirit-return in objective form that he says:

The good deceased come back
in our dreams; the state of mediumism is an extension of dream, it is
somnambulism in all its variety and ecstasies. Fathom the phenomenon of sleep
and you will understand the phenomena of the spirits.

And again

According to one of the great
dogmas of the Kabalah, the soul despoils itself in order to ascend, and thus
would have to re-clothe itself in matter to descend. There is but one way for a
spirit already liberated to manifest himself objectively on earth; he must get
back into his body and resurrect. This is quite another thing from hiding under
a table or a hat. Necromancy, or the evocation of materialized spirits, is
horrible. It constitutes a crime against Nature. We have admitted in our former
works the possibility of vampirism, and even undertaken to explain it. The
phenomena now actually occurring in America and Europe unquestionably belong to
this fearful malady. The mediums do not, it is true, eat the flesh of corpses [like
one Sergeant Bertrand]; but they breathe in throughout their whole nervous
organism the phosphoric emanations of putrefied corpses, or spectral light. They
are not vampires, but they evoke vampires; for this reason, they are nearly all
debilitated and sick (Science des Esprits. p.258).

155———————————————————KABALISTIC VIEWS OF “SPIRITS.”

Henry Kunrath was a most
learned Kabalist, and the greatest anthority among mediæval Occultists. He
gives, in one of the clavicles of his Amphitheatrum SapientiæÆternæ,
illustrative engravings of the four great classes of elementary Spirits, as they
presented them selves during an evocation of ceremonial Magic, before the eyes
of the Magus, when, after passing the threshold, he lifted the “Veil of Isis.”
In describing them, Kunrath corroborates Eliphas Levi. He tells us they are
disembodied, vicious men, who have parted with their divine Spirits and become
Elementaries. They are so termed, because attracted by the earthly atmosphere
and surrounded by the earth’s elements. Here Kunrath applies the term
“Elementary” to doomed human souls, While Levi uses it, as we have seen, to
designate another class of the same great family—Gnomes, Sylphs, Undines,
etc.—sub-human entities.

I have before me a manuscript,
intended originally for publication, but withheld for various reasons. The
author signs himself “Zeus,” and is a Kabalist of more than twenty-five years’
standing. This experienced Occultist, a zealous devotee of Kunrath, expounding
the doctrine of the latter, also says that the Kabalists divided the Spirits of
the elements into four classes, corresponding to the four temperaments in man.

It is charged against me as a
heinous offence that I aver that some men lose their souls and are annihilated.
But this last-named authority, “Zeus,” is equally culpable, for he says:

They [
the Kabalists] taught that
mail’s spirit descended from the great ocean of spirit, and is, therefore,
per se, pure and divine, but its soul or capsule, through the [allegorical] fall of Adam, became
contaminated with the world of darkness, or the world of Satan [evil] of which it must be
purified, before it could ascend again to celestial happiness. Suppose a drop of
water enclosed within a capsule remains whole, the drop of water remains
isolated; break the envelope, and the drop becomes a part of the ocean, its
individual existence has ceased. So it is with the spirit. So long as its ray is
enclosed in its plastic mediator or soul, it has an individual existence.
Destroy this capsule, the astral man then becomes an Elementary; this
destruction may occur from the consequences of sin, in the most depraved and
vicious, and the spirit returns back to its original abode—the individualization
of man has ceased. . . . This militates with the idea of progression that
Spiritualists generally entertain. If they understood the Law of harmony, they
would see their error. It is only by this Law that individual life can be
sustained; and the farther we deviate from harmony the more difficult it is to
regain it.

To return to Levi, he remarks
(La Haute Magie, vol. i. p. 319):

156————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

When we die, our interior
light [the soul] ascends agreeably to the attraction of its star [the spirit], but it
must first of all get rid of the coils of the serpent [earthly evil—sin], that is to
say, of the unpurified Astral Light which surrounds and holds it captive,
unless, by the force of Will, it frees and elevates itself. This immersion of
the living soul in the dead light [the emanations of everything that is evil, which
pollute the earth’s magnetic atmosphere, as the exhalation of a swamp does the
air] is a dreadful torture; the soul freezes and burns therein at the same time.

The Kabalists represent Adam
as the Tree of Life, of which the trunk is Humanity; the various races, the
branches; and individual men, the leaves. Every leaf has its individual life,
and is fed by the one sap; but it can live only through the branch, as the
branch itself draws its life through the trunk. Says the Kabalah:

The wicked are the dead leaves
and the dead bark of the tree. They fall, die, are corrupted and changed into
manure, which returns to the tree through the root.

My friend, Miss Emily
Kislingbury, of London, secretary of the British National Association of
Spiritualists, who is honoured, trusted and beloved by all who know her, sends
me a spirit-communication obtained, in April, 1877, through a young lady, who is
one of the purest and most truthful of her sex. The following extracts are
singularly a propos to the subject under discussion.

Friend, you are right. Keep
our Spiritualism pure and high, for there are those who would abase its uses.
But it is because they know not the power of Spiritualism. It is true, in a
sense, that the spirit can overcome the flesh, but there are those to whom the
fleshly life is dearer than the life of the spirit; they tread on dangerous
ground. For the flesh may so outgrow the spirit, as to withdraw from it all
spirituality, and man becomes as a beast of the field, with no saving power
left. These are they whom the church has termed “reprobate,” eternally lost, but
they suffer not, as the church has taught, in conscious hells. They merely die,
and are not; their light goes out, and has no conscious being. [Question]: But is this
not annihilation? [Answer]: It amounts to annihilation; they lose their individual
entities, and return to the great reservoir of spirit—unconscious spirit.

Finally, I am asked: “Who are
the trained Seers?” They are those, I answer, who have been trained from their
childhood, in the Pagodas, to use their spiritual sight; those whose accumulated
testimony has not varied for thousands of years as to the fundamental facts of
Eastern Philosophy; the testimony of each generation corroborating that of each
preceding one. Are these to be trusted more, or less, than the communications
of “bands”—each of whom contradicts the other as completely as the various
religious sects, which are ready to cut each other’s throats—and of mediums,
even the best of whom are

157———————————————————KABALISTIC VIEWS OF “SPIRITS.”

ignorant of their own nature,
and unsubjected to the wise direction and restraint of an Adept in Psychological
Science?

No comprehensive idea of
Nature can be obtained except by apply ing the Law of Harmony and analogy in the
spiritual as well as in the physical world. “As above, so below,” is the old
Hermetic axiom. If Spiritualists would apply this to the subject of their own
researches they would see the philosophical necessity of there being in the
world of Spirit, as was the world of Matter, a law of the survival of the
fittest.

Respectfully,

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

THE KNOUT

AS WIELDED BY THE GREAT
RUSSIAN THEOSOPHIST.

MR. COLEMAN’S FIRST
APPEARANCE.

[From The Religio-Philosophical
Journal,
March 16th, 1878]

I HAVE
read some of the
assaults upon Colonel Olcott and myself that have appeared in the Journal. Some
have amused me, others I have passed by unread; but I was quite unprepared for
the good fortune that lay in store for me in embryo in the paper of Feb. 6th.
The “Protest” of Mr.W. Emmette Coleman, entitled “Sclavonic Theosophy v.
American Spiritualism” is the musky rose in an odoriferous bouquet. Its pungent
fragrance would make the nose of a sensitive bleed, whose olfactory nerves would
withstand the perfume of a garden full of the Malayan flower-queen—the tuberose;
and yet, my tough, pug, Mongolian nose, which has smelt carrion in all parts of
the world, proved itself equal even to this emergency.

“From the sublime to the
ridiculous,” says the French proverb, “there is but a single step.” From
sparkling wit to dull absurdity there is no more. An attack, to be effective,
must have an antagonist to strike, for to kick against something that exists
only in one’s imagination, wrenches man or beast. Don Quixote fighting the “air
drawn” foes in his windmill, stands for ever the laughing-stock of all
generations, and the type of a certain class of disputants, whom, for the
moment, Mr. Coleman represents.

The pretext for two columns of
abuse—suggesting, I am sorry to say, parallel sewers—is that Miss Emily
Kislingbury, in an address before the B.N.A. of Spiritualists, mentioned Colonel
Olcott’s name in connection with a leadership of Spiritualism. I have the report
of her remarks before me, and find that she neither proposed Colonel Olcott to
American Spiritualists as a leader, nor said that he had wanted “leadership,”
desired it now, or could ever be persuaded to take it. Says Mr. Coleman:

If anyone is entitled to this
wealth of exclamation points it is Miss Kislingbury, for the charge against her
from beginning to end is simply an unmitigated falsehood. Miss Kislingbury
merely expressed the personal opinion that a certain gentleman, for whom she had
a deserved friendship, would have been capable, at one time, of acting as a
leader. This was her private opinion, to which she had as good a right as either
of her defamers—who in a cowardly way try to use Col. Olcott and myself as
sticks with which to break her head—have to their opinions. It may or may not
have been warranted by the facts— that is immaterial. The main point is, that
Miss Kislingbury has not said one word that gives the slightest pretext for Mr.
Coleman’s attacking her on this question of leadership. And yet, I am not
surprised at his course, for this brave, noble-hearted, truthful and spotless
lady occupies too impregnable a position to be assailed, except indirectly.
Someone had to pay for her plain speaking about American Spiritualism. What
better scapegoat than Olcott and Blavatsky, the twin “theosophical Gorgons”!

What a hullabaloo is raised,
to be sure, about Spiritualists declining to follow our “leadership.” In my
“Buddhistico-Tartaric” ignorance I have always supposed that something must be
offered before it can either be indignantly spurned or even respectfully
declined. Have we offered to lead Spiritualists by the nose or by other portions
of their anatomy? Have we ever proclaimed ourselves as “teachers,” or set
ourselves up as infallible “guides”? Let the hundreds of unanswered letters that
we have received from Spiritualists be our witness. Let us even include two
letters from Mr. W. Emmette Coleman, from Leaven worth, Kansas, calling
attention to his published articles of Jan. 13th, 20th, 27th, and Feb. 3rd (four
papers), inviting controversy. He says in his communication of Jan. 23rd, 1877,
to Col. Olcott, ‘‘I am in search of Truth”; therefore he has not all the truth.
He asks Col. Olcott to answer certain “interrogatories”; therefore our opinions
are admitted to have some weight. He says:

This address [the one he wants us
to read and express our opinion upon] was delivered some time since; if of more
recent date I [he] might modify somewhat.

Now Col. Olcott’s
People from The 0ther World was published Jan., 1875; Mr. Coleman’s letter to the Colonel was
written in Jan., 1877; and

160————————————————————A MODERN
PANARION.

his present “Protest” to the
Journal appeared Feb., 1878. It puzzles me to know how a man “in search of
Truth” could lower himself so far as to hunt for it in the coat-pockets of an
author whose work is

Clearly demonstrative of the
utterly unscientific character of his researches, full of exaggerations,
inaccuracies, marvellous statements recorded at second-hand without the
slightest confirmation, lackadaisical sentimentalities, egotistical rhodomontades, and grammatical inelegancies and solecisms.

To go to a man for “Truth” who
is characterized by The most fervid imagination and brilliant powers of
invention,—according to Mr. Emmette
Coleman—shows Mr. Coleman in a sorry light indeed! His only excuse can be that
in January, 1877, when he invited Col. Olcott to discuss with him—despite the
fact that the Theosophical Society had been established in 1875, and all our
“heresies” were already in print—his estimation of Col. Olcott’s intellectual
powers was different from what it is now, and that Mr. Coleman’s “address” has
been left two years unread and unnoticed. Does this look like our offering
ourselves as “leaders”? We address the great body of intelligent American
Spiritualists. They have as much a right to their opinions as we to ours; they
have no more right than we to falsely state the positions of their antagonists.
But their would-be champion, Mr. Coleman, for the sake of having an excuse to
abuse me, pretends to quote (see column 2, paragraph 1) from something I have
published, a whole sentence that I defy him to prove I ever made use of. This is downright literary
fraud and dishonesty. A man who is in “search of Truth” does not usually employ
a falsehood as a weapon.

Good friends, whose enquiries
we have occasionally, but rarely, answered, bear us witness that we have always
disclaimed anything like “leadership”; that we have invariably referred you to
the same standard authors whom we have read, the same old Philosophers we have
studied. We call on you to testify that we have repudiated dogmas and
dogmatists, whether living men or disembodied Spirits. As opposed to
Materialists, Theosophists are Spiritualists, but it would be as absurd for us
to claim the leadership of Spiritualism as for a Protestant priest to speak for
the Romish Church, or a Romish Cardinal to lead the great body of Protestants,
though both claim to be Christians! Recrimination seems to be the life and soul
of American journalism, but I really thought that a spiritualistic organ had more congenial
matter for its columns than such materialistic abuse as the present “Fort
Leavenworth” criticism!

161———————————————————————THE KNOUT.

One chief aim of the writer
seems to be to abuse Isis Unveiled. My publisher will doubtless feel under great
obligations for giving it such a notoriety just now, when the fourth edition is
ready to go to press. That the fossilized reviewers of The Tribune and Popular
Science Monthly—both admitted advocates of materialistic Science and unsparingly contemptuous denouncers of Spiritualism—should, without either of them
having read my book, brand it as spiritualistic moon shine, was perfectly
natural. I should have thought that I had written my first volume, holding up
Modern Science to public contempt for its unfair treatment of psychological
phenomena, to small purpose, if they had complimented me. Nor was I at all
surprised that the critic of the New York Sun permitted himself the coarse
language of a partizan and betrayed his ignorance of the contents of my book by
terming me a “Spiritualist.” But I am sorry that a critic like Mr. Coleman, who
professes to speak for the Spiritualists and against the Materialists, should
range himself by the side of the flunkeys of the latter, when at least twenty of
the first critics of Europe and America, not Spiritualists but well-read
scholars, have praised it even more unstintedly than he has bespattered it. If
such men as the author of The Great Dionysiak Myth and Poseidon—writing a
private letter to a fellow arch and scholar, which he thought I would never
see—says the design of my book is “simply colossal,” and that the book “is
really a marvellous production” and has his “entire concurrence” in its views
about:

(1) the wisdom of the ancient
Sages; (2) the folly of the merely material Philosopher (the Emmette Colemans,
Huxleys and Tyndalls);

(3) the doctrine of Nirvana; (4)
archaic monotheism, etc.; and when the London Public Opinion calls it “one of
the most extraordinary works of the nineteenth century” in an elaborate
criticism; and when Alfred R. Wallace says:

I am amazed at the vast amount
of erudition displayed in the chapters, and the great interest of the topics on
which they treat; your book will open up to many Spiritualists a whole world of
new ideas, and cannot fail to be of the greatest value in the enquiry which is
now being so earnestly carried on,
—Mr. Coleman really appears in
the sorry light of one who abuses for the mere sake of abusing.

What a curious psychological
power I must have All the Journal writers, from the talented editor down to Mr.
Coleman, pretend to account for the blind devotion of Col. Olcott to Theosophy,
the over-partial panegyric of Miss Kislingbury, the friendly recantation of

162———————————————————— A MODERN PANARION.

Dr. G. Bloede, and the
surprisingly vigorous defence of myself by Mr. C. Sotheran, and other recent
events, on the ground of my having psychologized them all into the passive
servitude of hoodwinked dupes! I can only say that such Psychology is next door
to miracle. That I could influence men and women of such acknowledged independence of character and intellectual capacity, would be at least more than any
of your lecturing mesmerizers or “spirit-controls” have been able to accomplish.
Do you not see, my noble enemies, the logical consequences of such a doctrine?
Admit that I can do that, and you admit the reality of Magic, and my powers as
an Adept. I never claimed that Magic was anything but Psychology practically
applied. That one of your mesmerizers can make a cabbage appear a rose is only a
lower form of the power you all endow me with. You give an old woman—whether
forty, fifty, sixty or ninety years old (some swear I am the latter, some the
former), it matters not; an old woman whose “Kalmuco-Buddhistico-Tartaric”
features, even in youth, never made her appear pretty; a woman whose ungainly
garb, uncouth manners and masculine habits are enough to frighten any bustled
and corseted fine lady of fashionable society out of her wits—you give her such
powers of fascination as to draw fine ladies and gentlemen, scholars and
artists, doctors and clergymen, to her house by scores, to not only talk
Philosophy with her, not merely to stare at her as though she were a monkey in
red flannel breeches, as some of them do, but to honour her in many cases with
their fast and sincere friendship and grateful kindness! Psychology! If that is
the name you give it, then, although I have never offered myself as a teacher,
you had better come, my friends, and be taught at once the “trick” (gratis—for,
unlike other psychologizers, I never yet took money for teaching any thing to
anybody), so that hereafter you may not be deceived into recognizing as—what Mr.
Coleman so graphically calls—”the sainted dead of earth,” those pimple-nosed and
garlic-breathing beings who climb ladders through trap-doors, and carry tow wigs
and battered masks in the penetralia of their underclothing.

H. P. BLAVATSKY,

—“the masculine-feminine
Sclavonic Theosoph from Crim-Tartary”—a title which does more credit to Mr.
Coleman’s vituperative ingenuity than to his literary accomplishments.

INDIAN METAPHYSICS

[From the London
Spiritualist,
March 22nd, 1877.]

Two peas in the same pod are
the traditional symbol of mutual resemblance, and the time-honoured simile
forced itself upon me when I read the twin letters of our two masked assailants
in your paper of Feb. 22nd. In substance they are so identical that one would
suppose the same person had written them simultaneously with his two hands, as
Paul Morphy will play you two games of chess, or Kossuth dictate two letters at
once. The only difference between these two letters— lying beside each other on
the same page, like two babes in one crib—is, that “M.A. Cantab’s” is
brief and courteous, while “Scrutator’s” is prolix and uncivil.

By a strange coincidence both
these sharp-shooters fire from behind their secure ramparts a shot at a certain
“learned Occultist” over the head of Mr. C. C. Massey, who quoted some of that
personage’s views, in a letter published May 10th, 1876. Whether in irony or
otherwise, they hurl the views of this “learned Occultist” at the heads of Col.
Olcott and myself, as though they were missiles that would floor us completely.
Now the “learned Occultist” in question is not a whit more, or less, learned
than your humble servant, for the very simple reason that we are identical. The
extracts published by Mr. Massey, by permission, were contained in a letter from
myself to him. More over it is now before me, and, save one misprint of no
consequence, I do not find in it a word that I would wish changed. What is said
there I repeat now over my signature—the theories of 1876 do not contradict
those of 1878 in any respect, as I shall endeavour to prove, after pointing out
to the impartial reader the quaking ground upon which our two critics stand.
Their arguments against Theosophy— certainly “Scrutator’s”—are like a verdant
moss, which displays a velvety carpet of green without roots and with a deep bog
below.

When a person enters on a
controversy over a fictitious signature, he

164————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

should be doubly cautious, if
he would avoid the accusation of abusing the opportunity of the mask to insult
his opponents with impunity. Who or what is “Scrutator”? A clergyman, a medium,
a lawyer, a philosopher, a physician (certainly not a metaphysician), or what?
Quien sabe? He seems to partake of the flavour of all, and yet to grace none.
Though his arguments are all interwoven with sentences quoted from our
letters, yet in no case does he criticize merely what is written by us, but
what he thinks we may have meant, or what the sentences might imply. Drawing
his deductions, then, from what existed only in the depths of his own
consciousness, he invents phrases, and forces constructions, upon which he
proceeds to pour out his wrath. Without meaning to be in the least personal—for,
though propagating “absurdities with the “utmost effrontery,” I should feel sorry
and ashamed to be as impertinent with “Scrutator” as he is with us—yet,
hereafter, when I see a dog chasing the shadow of his own tail, I will think of
his letter.

In my doubts as to what this
assailant might be, I invoked the help of Webster to give me a possible clue in
the pseudonym. “Scrutator,” says the great lexicographer, is “one who
scrutinizes,” and “scrutiny” he derives from the Latin scrutari, “to search even
to the rags”; which scrutari itself he traces back to a Greek root, meaning
“trash, trumpery.” In this ultimate analysis, therefore, we must regard the
nom de plume, while very applicable to his letter of February 22nd, as very unfortunate for himself; for, at best, it makes him a sort of literary chiffonnier, probing in the dust-heap of the language for bits of hard adjectives to
fling at us. I repeat that, when an anonymous critic accuses two persons of
“slanderous imputations” (the mere reflex of his own imagination), and of
“unfathomable absurdities,” he ought, at least, to make sure (1) that he has
thoroughly grasped what he is pleased to call the “teachings” of his
adversaries; and (2) that his own philosophy is infallible. I may add,
furthermore, that when that critic permits himself to call the views of other
people—not yet half digested by himself—”unfathomable absurdities,” he ought to
be mighty careful about introducing as arguments into the discussion sectarian
absurdities far more “unfathomable” and which have nothing to do with either
Science or Philosophy.

I suppose [gravely argues “Scrutator”]
a babe’s brain is soft and a quite unfit tool for intelligence, otherwise Jesus
could not have lost His intelligence when He took upon Himself the body and the
brain of a babe [!!?]

165————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.

The very opposite of Oliver
Johnson evidently, this Jesus-babe of “Scrutator’s.”

Such an argument might come
with a certain force in a discussion between two conflicting dogmatic sects, but
if picked “even to rags” it seems but “utmost effrontery”—to use “Scrutator’s”
own complimentary expression—to employ it in a philosophical debate, as if it
were either a scientific or historically proved fact! If I refused, at the very
start, to argue with our friend “M.A. Oxon.,” a man whom I esteem and respect as
I do few in this world, only because he put forward a “cardinal dogma,” I shall
certainly lose no time in debating Theosophy with a tattering Christian, whose
scrutinizing faculties have not helped him beyond the acceptance of the latest
of the world’s Avatâras, in all its unphilosophical dead-letter meaning, without
even suspecting its symbolical significance. To parade in a would-be philosophical debate the exploded dogmas of any Church, is most ineffectual, and
shows, at best, a great poverty of resource. Why does not “Scrutator” address
hiss refined abuse, ex cathedra, to the Royal Society, whose Fellows doom to
annihilation every human being, Theosophist or Spiritualist, pure or impure?

With crushing irony he speaks
of us as “our teachers.” Now I remember having distinctly stated in a previous
letter that we have not offered ourselves as teachers, but, on the contrary,
decline any such office—whatever may be the
superlative panegyric of my esteemed friend, Mr. 0. Sullivan, who not only sees
in me “a Buddhist priestess” (!), but, without a shadow of warrant of fact,
credits me with the foundation of the Theosophical Society and its Branches!
Had Colonel Olcott been half as “psychologized” by me as a certain American
Spiritualist paper will have it, he would have followed my advice and refused to
make public our “views,” even though so much and so often importuned in
different quarters. With characteristic stubbornness, however, he had his own
way, and now reaps the consequence of having thrown his bomb into a hornet’s
nest. Instead of being afforded opportunity for a calm debate, we get but
abuse, pure and simple—the only weapon of partisans. Well, let us make the best
of it, and join our opponents in picking the question “to rags.” Mr. C. C.
Massey comes in for his share, too, and though fit to be a leader himself, is
given by “Scrutator” a chief!

Neither of our critics seems
to understand our views (or his own) so little as “Scrutator.” He misapprehends
the meaning of Elementary,

166————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

and makes a sad mess of Spirit
and Matter. Hear him say that Elementary

Is a new-fangled and
ill-defined term . . not yet two years old.

This sentence alone proves
that he forces himself into the discussion, without any comprehension of the
subject at issue. Evidently, he has neither read the mediæval nor modern
Kabalists. Henry Kunrath is as unfamiliar to him as the Abbe Constant. Let him
go to the British Museum, and ask for the Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ
Æternæ Kunrath. He
will find in it illustrative engravings of the four great classes of elementary
Spirits, as seen during an evocation of ceremonial Magic by the Magus who lifts
the Veil of Isis. The author explains that these are disembodied vicious men,
who have parted with their divine Spirits, and become as beasts. After reading
this volume, “Scrutator” may profitably consult Eliphas Levi whom he will find
using the words “Elementary Spirits” throughout his Dogmae et Rituel de la
Haute
Magie, in both senses in which we have employed it. This is especially the case
where (vol. i. p. 262, seq.) he speaks of the evocation of Apollonius of Tyana
by himself. Quoting from the greatest Kabalistic authorities, he says:

When a man has lived well, the
astral cadaver evaporates like a pure incense, as it mounts towards the higher
regions; but if a man has lived in crime, his astral cadaver, which holds him
prisoner, seeks again the objects of his passions and desires to resume its
earthly life. It torments the dreams of young girls, bathes in the vapour of
spilt blood, and wallows about the places where the pleasures of his life
flitted by; it watches without ceasing over the treasures which it possessed and
buried; it wastes itself in painful efforts to make for itself material organs [materialize itself] and live again. But the astral elements attract and absorb it;
its memory is gradually lost, its intelligence weakens, all its being dissolves.

The unhappy wretch loses thus
in succession all the organs which served its sinful appetites. Then it [this astral
body, this “soul,” this all that is left of the once living man] dies a second
time and for ever, for it then loses its personality and its memory. Souls which
are destined to live, but which are not yet entirely purified, remain for a
longer or shorter time captive in the astral cadaver, where they are refined by
the odic light, which seeks to assimilate them to itself and dissolve. It is to
rid themselves of this cadaver that suffering souls sometimes enter the bodies
of living persons, and remain there for a time in a state which the Kabalists
call embryonic [embryonnal]. These are the aerial phantasmas evoked by
necromancy [ I may add, the “materialized Spirits” evoked by the unconscious
necromancy of incautious mediums, in cases where the forms are not
transformations of their own doubles]; these are larvæ, substances dead or dying
with which one places himself en rapport.

167————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.

Further, Levi says (op. cit., p.
164):

The astral light is saturated
with elementary souls. . . Yes, yes, these spirits of the elements do exist.
Some wandering in their spheres, others trying to incarnate themselves, others,
again already incarnated and living on earth; these are vicious and imperfect
men.

And in the face of this
testimony—which he can find in the British Museum, two steps from the office of
The Spiritualist (!)—that since the Middle Ages the Kabalists have been writing
about the Elementaries, and their potential annihilation, “Scrutator” permits
himself to arraign Theosophists for their “effrontery” in foisting upon Spiritualists a “new-fangled and ill-defined term” which is “not yet two years old”!

In truth, we may say that the
idea is older than Christianity, for it is found in the ancient Kabalistic books
of the Jews. In the olden time they defined three kinds of “souls”—the daughters
of Adam, the daughters of the angels and those of sin; and in the book of The
Revolution of the Souls three kinds of “Spirits” (as distinct from material
bodies) are shown—the captive, the wandering and the free Spirits. If
“Scrutator” were acquainted with the literature of Kabalism, he would know that
the term Elementary applies not only to one principle or constituent part, to
an elementary primary substance, but also embodies the idea which we express by
the term elemental—that which pertains to the four elements of the material
world, the first principles or primary ingredients. The word “elemental” as
defined by Webster, was not current at the time of Kunrath, but the idea was
perfectly understood. The distinction has been made, and the term adopted by
Theosophists for the sake of avoiding confusion. The thanks we get are that we
are charged with propounding, in 1878, a different theory of the “Elementaries”
from that of 1876!

Does anything herein stated
either as from ourselves, or Kunrath, or Levi contradict the statement of the
‘‘learned Occultist’’ that:

Each atom, no matter where
found, is imbued with that vital principle called spirit each grain of sand,
equally with each minutest atom of the human body, has its inherent latent
spark of the divine light?

Italicizing some words of the
above, but omitting to emphasize the one important word of the sentence, i.e.,
“latent,” which contains the key to the whole mystery, our critic mars the
sense. In the grain of sand, and each atom of the human material body, the
Spirit is latent, not active; hence being but a correlation of the highest
light, some-

169————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.

defined a materialized Spirit
as “frozen whiskey,” was right in his way. A Copious vocabulary, indeed, that
has but one term for God and for alcohol! With all their libraries of
metaphysics, European nations have not even gone to the trouble of inventing
appropriate words to elucidate metaphysical ideas. If they had, perhaps one book
in every thousand would have sufficed to really instruct the public, instead of
there being the present confusion of words, obscuring intelligence, and utterly
hampering the Orientalist, who would expound his Philosophy in English.
Whereas, in the latter language, I find but one word to express, perhaps, twenty
different ideas, in the Eastern tongues, especially Sanskrit, there are twenty
words or more to render one idea in its various shades of meaning.

We are accused of propagating
ideas that would surprise the “average” Buddhist. Granted, and I will liberally
add that the average Brâhmanist might be equally astonished. We never said that
we were either Buddhists or Brâhmanists in the sense of their popular exoteric
Theologies. Buddha, sitting on his Lotus, or Brahmâ, with any number of
teratological arms, appeals to us as little as the Catholic Madonna or the
Christian personal God, which stare at us from cathedral walls and ceilings.
But neither Buddha nor Brahmâ represents to His respective worshippers the same
ideas as these Catholic icons which we regard as blasphemous. In this particular
who dares say that Christendom with its civilization has outgrown the fetichism
of Fijians? When we see Christians and Spiritualists speaking so flippantly and
confidently about God and the “materialization of Spirit,” we wish they might be
made to share a little in the reverential ideas of the old Aryas.

We do not write for “average”
Buddhists, or average people of any sort. But I am quite willing to match any
tolerably educated Buddhist or Brâhman against the best metaphysicians of
Europe, to compare views on God and on man’s immortality.

The ultimate abstract
definition of this—call it God, Force, Principle, as you will—will ever remain a
mystery to Humanity, though it attain to its highest intellectual development.
The anthropomorphic ideas of Spiritualists concerning Spirit are a direct
consequence of the anthropomorphic conceptions of Christians as to the Deity.
So directly is the one the outflow of the other, that “Scrutator’s” handiest
argument against the duality of a child and potential immortality is to cite

Jesus who increased in wisdom
as His brain increased.

170————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Christians call God an Infinite
Being, and then endow Him with every finite attribute, such as love, anger,
benevolence, mercy! They call Him all-merciful, and preach damnation for
three-fourths of Humanity in every church, all-just, and the sins of this brief
span of life may not be expiated by even an eternity of conscious agony. Now, by
some miracle of oversight, among thousands of mistranslations in the “Holy”
Writ, the word “destruction,” the synonym of annihilation, was rendered
correctly in King James’s version, and no dictionary can make it read either
damnation or eternal torment. Though the Church consistently put down the
“destructionists,” yet the impartial will scarcely deny that they come nearer
than their persecutors to believing what Jesus taught, and what is consistent
with justice, in teaching the final annihilation of the wicked.

To conclude, then, we believe
that there is but one undefinable Principle in the whole Universe, which being
utterly incomprehensible by our finite intellects, we prefer rather to leave
undebated than to blaspheme Its majesty with our anthropomorphic speculations.
We believe that all else which has being, whether material or spiritual, and all
that may have existence, actually, or potentially in our idealism, emanates from
this Principle. That everything is a correlation in one shape or another of this
Will and Force; and hence, judging of the unseen by the visible, we base our
speculations upon the teachings of the generations of Sages who preceded
Christianity, fortified by our own reason.

I have already illustrated the
incapacity of some of our critics to separate abstract ideas from complex
objects, by instancing the grain of sand and the nail-paring. They refuse to
comprehend that a philosophical doctrine can teach that an atom imbued with
divine light, or a portion of the great Spirit, in its latent stage of
correlation, may, not withstanding its reciprocal or corresponding similarity
and relations to the one indivisible whole, be yet utterly deficient in
self-consciousness. That it is only when this atom, magnetically drawn to its
fellow-atoms, which had served in a previous state to form with it some lower
complex object, is transformed at last, after endless cycles of evolution, into
man—the apex of perfected being, intellectually and physically, on our planet—in
conjunction with them it becomes, as a whole, a living soul, and reaches the
state of intellectual self-consciousness.

A stone becomes a plant, a
plant an animal, an animal a man, and man a Spirit, say the Kabalists. And here
again, is the wretched necessity of trans-

171————————————————————INDIAN METAPHYSICS.

lating by the word “Spirit” an
expression which means a celestial, or rather ethereal, transparent man. But if
man is the crown of evolution on earth, what is he in the initiatory stages of
the next existence, that man who, at his best—even when he is pretended to have
served as a habitation for the Christian God, Jesus—is said by Paul to have been
“made a little lower than the angels”? But now we have every astral spook
transformed into an “angel”! I cannot believe that the scholars who write for
your paper—and there are some of great intelligence and erudition who think for
themselves, and whom exact science has taught that ex nihilo nihil fit who know
that every atom of man’s body has been evolving by imperceptible gradations,
from lower into higher forms, through the cycles—accept the unscientific and
illogical doctrine that the simple unshelling of an astral man transforms him
into a celestial Spirit and “angel” guide.

In Theosophical opinion a
Spirit is a Ray, a fraction of the Whole; and the Whole being Omniscient and
Infinite, Its fraction must partake, in degree, of the same abstract
attributes. Man’s “Spirit” must become the drop of the Ocean, called
“Ishvara-Bhâva”—the “I am one body, together with the universe itself” (I am in
my Father, and my Father is in me), instead of remaining but the “Jiva-Bhâva the
body only. He must feel himself not only a part of the Creator, Preserver and
Destroyer, but of the Soul of the Three, the Parabrahman, Who is above these and
is the vitalizing, energizing and ever-presiding Spirit. He must fully realize
the sense of the word “Sahajanund,” that state of perfect bliss in Nirvana,
which can only exist for the It, which has become coexistent with the “formless
and actionless present time.” This is the state called “Vartamâna,” or the “ever
still present,” in which there is neither past nor future, but one infinite
eternity of present. Which of the controlling “spirits,” materialized or
invisible, have shown any signs that they belong to the kind of real Spirits
known as the “Sons of Eternity”? Has the highest of them been able to tell even
as much as our own Divine Nous can whisper to us in moments when there comes the
flash of sudden prevision? Honest communicating “intelligences” often answer to
many questions: “We do not know; this has not been revealed to us.” This very
admission proves that, while in many cases on their way to knowledge and
perfection, yet they are but embryonic, undeveloped “Spirits”; they are inferior
even to some living Yogis who, through abstract meditation, have united
themselves with their personal individual Brahman, their Atman, and

172————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

hence have overcome the “Agnyânam,”
or lack of that knowledge as to the intrinsic value of one’s “self,” the Ego or
self-being, so recommended by Socrates and the Delphic commandment.

London has been often visited
by highly intellectual, educated Hindus. I have not heard of any one professing
a belief in “materialized Spirits”

—as Spirits. When not tainted
with Materialism, through demoralizing association with Europeans. and when free
from superstitious sectarianism, how would one of them, versed in the Vedânta,
regard these apparitions of the circle? The chances are that, after going the
rounds of the mediums, he would say: “Some of these may be survivals of
disembodied men’s intelligences, but they are no more spiritual than the
average man. They lack the knowledge of ‘Dryananta,’ and evidently find
themselves in a chronic state of ‘Mâyâ,’ i.e., possessed of the idea that ‘they
are that which they are not.’ The ‘Vartamâna’ has no significance for them, as
they are cognizant but of the ‘Vishania’ [that which, like the concrete numbers in
mixed mathematics, applies to that which can be numbered]. Like simple,
ignorant mortals, they regard the shadow of things as the reality, and vice
versa, mixing up the true light of the ‘Vyatireka’ with the false light or
deceitful appearance—the ‘Anvaya.’ . . . In what respect, then, are they higher
than the average mortal? No; they are not spirits, not ‘Devas,’ they are astral ‘Dasyoos.’

Of course all this will appear
to “Scrutator” “unfathomable absurdities,” for unfortunately, few metaphysicians
shower down from Western skies. Therefore, so long as our
English opponents will remain in their semi-Christian ideas, and not only ignore
the old Philosophy, but the very terms it employs to render abstract ideas; so
long as we are forced to transmit these ideas in a general way—particularly as
it is impracticable without the invention of special words—it will be unprofitable to push discussion to any great lengths. We would only make ourselves
obnoxious to the general reader, and receive from other anonymous writers such
unconvincing compliments as “Scrutator” has favoured us with.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, March 7th, 1877.

“H. M.” AND THE TODAS—————

[From the London
Spiritualist.]

I
HAVE read the communication
of “H. M.” in your paper of the 8th inst. I would not have mentioned the “Todas”
at all in my book, if I had not read a very elaborate octavo work in 271 pp., by
William S. Marshall, Lieut.-Col. of Her Majesty’s Bengal Staff Corps, entitled:

A Phrenologist among the Todas,
copiously illustrated with photographs of the squalid and filthy beings to whom
“H. M.” refers. Though written by a staff officer, assisted “by the Rev.
Friedrich Metz, of the Basle Missionary Society, who had spent upwards of twenty
years of labour” among them, “the only European able to speak the obscure Toda
tongue,” the book is so full of misrepresentations—though both writers appear to
be sincere— that I wrote what I did.

What I said I knew to be true,
and I do not retract a single word. If neither “H. M.” nor Lieut.-Col. Marshall,
nor the Rev. Mr. Metz have penetrated the secret that lies behind the dirty huts
of the aborigines they have seen, that is their misfortune, not my fault.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, March 18th, 1878.

THE TODAS—————

[From the London
Spiritualist.]

FOR
my answer to the sneer of
your correspondent “H. M.” about my opinion of the Todas a few lines sufficed. I
only cared to say that what I have written in Isis Unveiled was written after
reading Col. Marshall’s A Phrenologist among the Todas, and in consequence of
what, whether justly or not, I believe to be the erroneous statements of that
author. Writing about Oriental psychology, its phenomena and practitioners, as I
did, I should have been ludicrously wanting in common sense if I had not
anticipated such denials and contradictions as those of “H. M.” from every side.
How would it profit the seeker after this Occult knowledge to face danger,
privations, and obstacles of every kind to gain it, if, after attaining his end,
he should not have facts to relate of which the profane were ignorant? A pretty
set of critics are the ordinary travellers or observers, even though what Dr.
Carpenter euphemistically calls a “scientific officer,” or “distinguished
civilian,” when, confessedly, every European unfurnished with some mystical
passport is debarred from entering any orthodox Brâhman’s house or the inner
precincts of a pagoda. How we poor Theosophists should tremble before the scorn
of those modern Daniels when the cleverest of them has never been able to
explain the commonest “tricks” of Hindu jugglers, to say nothing of the
phenomena of the Fakirs! These very savants answer the testimony of
Spiritualists with an equally lofty scorn, and resent as a personal affront the
invitation to even attend a seance.

I should therefore have let the
“Todas” question pass, but for the letter of “Late Madras C. S.” in your paper
of the 15thI feel bound to answer it, for the writer plainly makes me out to be a
liar. He threatens me, moreover, with the thunderbolts that a certain other
officer has concealed in his library closet.

It is quite remarkable how a
man who resorts to an alias sometimes forgets that he is a gentleman. Perhaps
such is the custom in your

175———————————————————————THE TODAS.

civilized England, where
manners and education are said to be carried to a superlative elegance; but not
so in poor, barbarous Russia, which a good portion of your countrymen are just
now trying to strangle (if they can). In my country of Tartaric Cossacks and
Kalmucks, a man who sets out to insult another does not usually hide himself
behind a shield. I am sorry to have to say this much, but you have allowed me,
without the least provocation and upon several occasions, to be unstintedly
reviled by correspondents, and I am sure that you are too much of a man of
honour to refuse me the benefit of an answer. “Late Madras, C. S.” sides with
Mrs. Showers in the insinuation that I never was in India at all. This reminds
me of a calumny of last year, originating with “spirits” speaking through a
celebrated medium at Boston, and finding credit in many quarters.

It was, that I was not a
Russian, did not even speak that language, but was merely a French adventuress.
So much for the infallibility of some of the sweet “angels.” Surely, I will
neither go to the trouble of exhibiting to any of my masked detractors, of this
or the other world, my passports vise’s by the Russian embassies half a dozen
times on my way to India and back. Nor will I demean myself by showing the
stamped envelopes of letters received by me in different parts of India.

Such an accusation makes me
simply laugh, for my word is, surely, as good as that of anybody else. I will
only say that more’s the pity that an English officer, who was “fifteen years in
the district,” knows less of the Todas than I, who, he pretends, never was in
India at all. He calls Gopuram a “tower” of the pagoda. Why not the roof or any
thing else as well? Gopuram is the sacred pylon, the pyramidal gate way by
which the pagoda is entered; and yet I have repeatedly heard the people of
southern India call the pagoda itself a Gopuram. It may be a careless mode of
expression employed among the vulgar; but when we come to consult the authority
of the best Indian lexicographers we find it accepted. In John Shakespear’s Hindustáni English Dictionary (edition of 1849, p. 1727) the word Gopuram is rendered as “an idol temple of the Hindus.” Has “Late Madras C. S.” or any of his
friends, ever climbed up into the interior, so as to know who or what is
concealed there? If not, then perhaps his fling at me was a trifle premature. I
am sorry to have shocked the sensitiveness of such a philological purist, but
really I do not see why, when speaking of the temples of the Todas—whether they
exist or not—even a Brâhman Guru might not say that they had their Gopurams?
Perhaps

176————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

he, or some other brilliant
authority in Sanskrit and other Indian languages, will favour us with the
etymology of the word? Does the first syllable, go or gu, relate to the
roundness of these “towers” as my critic calls them (for the word go does mean
something round) or to gop, a cowherd, which gave its name to a Hindu caste and
was one of the names of Krishna, Go-pal meaning the cowherd? Let these critics
carefully read Col. Marshall’s work and see whether the pastoral tribe, whom he
saw so much, and discovered so little about, whose worship (exoteric, of course)
is all embraced in the care of the sacred cows and buffaloes, the distribution
of the “divine fluid”—milk, and whose seeming adoration, as the missionaries
tell us, is so great for their buffaloes that they call them the “gift of God,”
could not be said to have their Gopurams, though the latter were but a
cattle-pen, a tirieri, the maund, in short, into which the phrenological explorer
crawled alone by night with infinite pains and—neither saw nor found anything.
And because he found nothing he concludes they have no religion, no idea of God,
no worship. About as reasonable an inference as Dr. W. B. Carpenter might come
to if he had crawled into Mrs. Showers’ séance— room some night when all the
“angels” and their guests had fled, and straightway reported that among
Spiritualists there are neither mediums nor phenomena.

Col. Marshall I find far less
dogmatic than his admirers. Such cautious phrases as “I believe,” “I could not
ascertain,” “I believe it to be true,” and the like, show his desire to find out
the truth, but scarcely prove conclusively that he has found it. At best it only
comes to this, that Col. Marshall believes one thing to be true, and I look
upon it differently. He credits his friend the missionary, and I believe my
friend the Brâhman, who told me what I have written. Besides, I explicitly state
in my book (see Isis, vol. ii. pp. 614, 615):

As soon as their [the Todas’]
solitude was profaned by the avalanche of civilization . . the Todas began
moving away to other parts as unknown and more inaccessible than the Neilgherri
hills had formerly been.

The Todas, therefore, of whom
my Brâhman friend spoke, and whom Capt. W. L. D. O’Grady, late manager of the
Madras Branch Bank at Ootacamund, tells me he has seen specimens of, are not
the degenerate remnants of the tribe whose phrenological bumps were measured by
Col. Marshall. And yet, even what the latter writes of these, I from personal
knowledge affirm to be in many particulars inaccurate. I may be regarded by my
critics as over-credulous, but this is surely no

177———————————————————————THE TODAS.

reason why I should be treated
as a liar whether by late or living Madras authorities of the C. S. Neither
Capt. O’Grady, who was born at Madras and was for a time stationed on the
Neilgherri hills, nor I, recognized the individuals photographed in Col.
Marshall’s book as Todas. Those we saw wore their dark brown hair very long, and
were much fairer than the Badagas, or any other Hindus in neither of which
particulars do they resemble Col. Marshall’s types. “H. M.” says:

The Todas are brown, coffee-coloured,
like most other natives.

But turning to Appleton’s
Cyclopædia (vol. xii. p. 173), we read:

These people are of a light
complexion, have strongly-marked Jewish features, and have been supposed by many
to be one of the lost tribes.

“H. M.” assures us that the
places inhabited by the Todas are not infested by venomous serpents or tigers;
but the same Cyclopædia remarks that:

The mountains are swarming with
wild animals of all descriptions, among which elephants and tigers are
numerous.

But the “Late” (defunct?—is
your correspondent a disembodied angel?) “Madras C. S.” attains to the sublimity
of the ridiculous when, with biting irony in winding up, he says:

All good spirits, of whatever
degree, astral or elementary, . . . prevent his [Capt. R. F. Burton’s] ever meeting
with Isis—rough might be the unveiling

Surely unless that military
Nemesis should tax the hospitality of some American newspaper, conducted by
politicians, he could never be rougher than this Madras Grandison. And then, the
idea of suggesting that, after having contradicted and made sport of the
greatest authorities of Europe and America, to begin with Max Muller and end
with the Positivists, in both my volumes, I should be appalled by Captain
Burton, or the whole lot of captains in Her Majesty’s service—though each
carried an Armstrong gun on his shoulder and a mitrailleuse in his pocket—is
positively superb! Let them reserve their threats and terrors for my Christian
countrymen.

Any moderately equipped
sciolist (and the more empty-headed, the easier) might tear Isis to shreds, in
the estimation of the vulgar, with his sophisms and presumably authoritative
analysis; but would that prove him to be right, and me wrong? Let all the
records of medial phenomena, rejected, falsified, slandered and ridiculed, and
of mediums terrorized, for thirty years past, answer for me. I, at least, am not
of the kind to be bullied into silence by such tactics, as “Late Madras”

178————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

may in time discover; nor will
he ever find me skulking behind a nom de plume when I have insults to offer. I
always have had, as I now have, and trust ever to retain, the courage of my
opinions, however unpopular or erroneous they may be considered; and there are
not showers enough in Great Britain to quench the ardour with which I stand by
my convictions.

There is but one way to account
for the tempest which, for four months, has raged in The Spiritualist against
Col. Olcott and myself, and that is expressed in the familiar French proverb—”
Quand on veut tuer son chien, on dit qu’il est enrage".

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, March 24th 1878.

THE AHKOOND OF SWAT

THE FOUNDER OF MANY MYSTICAL
SOCIETIES.—————

[From the New York Echo, 1878.]

OF the many remarkable
characters of this century, Ghafur was one of the most conspicuous.

If there be truth in the
Eastern doctrine that souls, powerful whether for good or bad, who had not time
in one existence to work out their plans, are reincarnated, the fierceness of
their yearnings to continue on earth thrusting them back into the current of
their attractions, then Ghafur was a rebirth of that Felice Peretti, who is
known in history as Pope Sixtus V., of crafty and odious memory. Both were born
in the lowest class of society, being ignorant peasant boys and beginning life
as herdsmen. Both reached the apex of power through craft and stealth and by
imposing upon the superstitions of the masses. Sixtus, author of mystical books
and himself a practitioner of the forbidden sciences to satisfy his lust for
power and ensure impunity, became Inquisitor-General. Made Pope, he hurled his
anathemas alike against Elizabeth of England, the King of Navarre, and other
important personages. Abdul Ghafur, endowed with an iron will, had educated
himself without colleges or professors except through association with the “wise
men” of Khuttuk. He was as well versed in the Arabic and Persian literature of
alchemy and astronomy as Sixtus was in Aristotle, and like him knew how to
fabricate mesmerized talismans and amulets containing either life or death for
those to whom they were presented. Each held millions of devotees under the
subjection of their psycho logical influence, though both were more dreaded than
beloved.

Ghafur had been a warrior and
an ambitious leader of fanatics, but becoming a dervish and finally a pope, so
to say, his blessing or curse made him as effectually the master of the Ameers
and other Mussulmans as Sixtus was of the Catholic potentates of Europe.

Only the salient features of
his career are known to Christendom.

180————————————————————A M0DERN PANARION.

Watched, as he may have been,
his private life, ambitions, aspirations for temporal as well as religious
power, are almost a sealed book. But the one certain thing is, that he was the
founder and chief of nearly every secret society worth speaking of among
Mussulmans, and the dominant spirit in all the rest. His apparent antagonism to
the Wahabees was but a mask, and the murderous hand that struck Lord Mayo was
certainly guided by the old Abdul. The Biktashee Dervishes* and the howling,
dancing, and other Moslem religious mendicants recognize his supremacy as far
above that of the Sheik-ul-Islam of the faithful. Hardly a political order of
any importance issued from Constantinople or Teheran—heretics though the
Persians are—without his having a finger in the pie directly or indirectly. As
fanatical as Sixtus, but more cunning yet, if possible, instead of giving direct
orders for the extermination of the Huguenots of Islam, the Wahabees, he
directed his curses and pointed his finger only at those among them whom he
found in his way, keeping on the best, though secret, terms with the rest.

The title of Nasr-ed-Din
(defender of the faith) he impartially applied to both the Sultan and the Shah,
though one is a Sunnite and the other a Shiah. He sweetened the stronger
religious intolerance of the Osman dynasty by adding to the old title of Nasr-ed-Din
those of Saif-ed-Din (scimitar of faith) and Emir-el-Mumminiah (prince of the
faithful). Every Emir-el-Sourey, or leader of the sacred caravan of pilgrims to
Mekka, brought or sent messages to, and received advice and instructions from,
Abdul, the latter in the shape of mysterious oracles, for which was left the
full equivalent in money, presents and other offerings, as the Catholic pilgrims
have recently done at Rome.

In 1847-8 the Prince Mirza,
uncle of the young Shah and ex-governor of a great province in Persia, appeared
in Tiflis, seeking Russian protection at the hands of Prince Woronzof, Viceroy
of the Caucasus. Having helped himself to the crown jewels and ready money in
the treasury, he had run away from the jurisdiction of his loving nephew, who
was anxious to put out his eyes. Popular rumour asserted that his reason for
what he had done was that the great dervish, Ahkoond, had thrice appeared to him
in dreams, prompting him to take what he had and share his booty with the
protectors of the faith of his principal wife (he brought twelve with him to
Tiflis), a native of Cabul. The—————

* To this day, no
Biktashee
would be recognized as Such unless he could claim possession of a certain medal
with the seal of this high-pontiff” of all the Dervishes, whether they belong to
one sect or the other.

181———————————————————THE AHKOOND OF SWAT.

secret, though, perhaps,
indirect influence he exercised on the Begum of Bhopal, during the Sepoy
rebellion of 1857, was a mystery only to the English, whom the old schemer knew
so well how to hoodwink. During his long career of Macchiavellism, friendly with
the British, and yet striking them constantly in secret; venerated as a new
prophet by millions of orthodox, as well as heretic Mussulmans; managing to
preserve his influence over friend and foe, the old “Teacher” had one enemy whom
he feared, for he knew that no amount of craft would ever win it over to his
side. This enemy was the once mighty nation of the Sikhs, ex-sovereign rulers of
the Punjab and masters of the Peshawur Valley. Reduced from their high estate,
this warrior people are now under the rule of a single Mahârâjah—Puttiala—who
is him self the helpless vassal of the British. From the beginning the Ahkoond
had continually encountered the Sikhs in his path. Scarce would he feel himself
conqueror over one obstacle, before his hereditary enemy would appear between
him and the realization of his hopes. If the Sikhs remained faithful to the
British in 1857, it was not through hearty loyalty or political convictions, so
much as through sheer opposition to the Mohammedans, whom they knew to be
secretly prompted by the Ahkoond.

Since the days of the great
Nanak, of the Kshattriya caste, founder of the Sikh Brotherhood in the second
half of the fifteenth century, these brave and warlike tribes have ever been the
thorn in the side of the Mogul dynasty, the terror of the Moslems of India.
Originating, as we may say, in a religious Brotherhood, whose object was to make
away alike with Islamism, Brâhmanism, and other isms, including later
Christianity, this sect evolved a pure monotheism in the abstract idea of an
ever unknown Principle, and elaborated it into the doctrine of the “Brotherhood
of Man.” In their view, we have but one Father- Mother Principle, with “neither
form, shape, nor colour,” and we ought all to be, if we are not, brothers
irrespective of distinctions of race or colour. The sacerdotal Brâhman,
fanatical in his observance of dead-letter forms, thus became in the opinion of
the Sikh as much the enemy of truth as the Mussulman wallowing in a sensual
heaven with his houris, the joss-worshipping Buddhist grinding out prayers at
his wheel, or yet the Roman Catholic adoring his jewelled Madonnas, whose
complexion the priests change from white to brown and black to suit climates and
prejudices. Later on, Arjuna, son of Ramdas, the fourth in the succession after
Nanak, gathering together the doctrines

182————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

of the founder and his son
Angad, brought out a sacred volume, called Adi-garunth, and largely supplemented
it with selections from forty- five Sutras of the Jains. While adopting equally
the religious figures of the Vedas and Koran, after sifting them and explaining
their symbolism, the Adi-garuizlh yet presents a greater similarity of ideas
respecting the most elaborate metaphysical conceptions with those of the Jain
school of Gurus. The notions of Astrology, or the influence of the starry
spheres upon ourselves, were evidently adopted from that most prominent school
of antiquity. This will be readily ascertained by comparing the commentaries of Abhayadeva Sun upon the original forty-five Sfttras in the Magadhi or Balabasha
languages* with the Adigarunik. An old Jain Guru, who is said to have drawn the
horoscope of Runjeet Singh, at the time of his greatest power, had foretold the
downfall of the kingdom of Lahore. It was the learned Arjuna who retired into
Amritsir, changed the sect into a politico- religious community, and instituted
within the same another and more esoteric body of Gurus, scholars and
metaphysicians, of which he became sole chief. He died in prison, under torture,
by the order of Aurungzebe, into whose hands he had fallen, at the beginning of
the seventeenth century. His son Govinda, a Guru (religious teacher) of great
renown, vowed revenge against the race of his father’s murderers, and after
various changes of fortune the Afghans were finally driven from the Punjab by
the Sikhs in 1764. This triumph only made their hatred more bitter still, and
from that moment until the death of Runjeet Singh, in 1839, we find them
constantly aiming their blows at the Moslems. Mahâ Singh, the father of Runjeet,
had set off the Sikhs into twelve mizals or divisions, each having its own
chief (Sirdar), whose secret Council of State consisted of learned Gurus. Among
these were Masters in spiritual Science, and they might, if they had had a mind,
have exhibited as astonishing “miracles” and divine legerdemain as the old
Mussulman Ahkoond. He knew it well, and for this reason dreaded them even more
than he hated them for his defeat and that of his Ameer by Runjeet Singh.

One highly dramatic incident in
the life of the “Pope of Sydoo” is the following well-authenticated case, which
was much commented upon in his part of India about twenty years ago. One day, in
1858,—————

* This valuable work is now being
republished by Ookerdhabhoy Shewgee, and has been received by the Theosophical
Society from the Editor through the President of the Bombay branch. When
finished
it will be the first edition of the Jain Bible, Sudra-Sangraha or Vihiva
Punnutti Sudra in existence, as all their sacred books are kept in secret by the
Jains.

183———————————————————THE AHKOOND OF SWAT.

when the Ahkoond, squatting on
his carpet, was distributing amulets, blessings and prophecies among his pious
congregation of pilgrims, a tall Hindu who had silently approached and mingled
in the crowd without having been noticed, suddenly addressed him thus: “Tell me,
prophet, thou who prophesiest so well for others, whether thou knowest what will
be thine own fate, and that of the ‘Defender of the Faith,’ thy Sultan of
Stamboul, twenty years hence?”

The old Ghafur, overcome with
violent surprise, stared at his interlocutor, but no answer came. In
recognizing the Sikh he seemed to have lost all power of speech, and the crowd
was under a spell.

“If not,” continued the
intruder, “then I will tell thee. Twenty years more and your ‘Prince of the
Faithful’ will fall by the hand of an assassin of his own house. Two old men,
one the Dalai Lama of the Christians, the other the great prophet of the
Moslems—thyself— will be simultaneously crushed under the heel of death. Then,
the first hour will strike of the downfall of those twin foes of truth—
Christianity and Islam. The first, as the more powerful, will survive the
second, but both will soon crumble into fragmentary sects, which will mutually
exterminate each other’s faith. See, thy followers are powerless, and I might
kill thee now, but thou art in the hands of Destiny, and that knows its own
hour.”

Before a hand could be lifted
the speaker had disappeared. This incident of itself sufficiently proves that
the Sikhs might have assassinated Abdul Ghafur at any time had they chosen so
to do. And it may be that The Mayfair Gazette which in June, 1877, prophetically
observed that the rival pontiffs of Rome and Swat might die simultaneously, had
heard from some “old Indian” this story, which the writer also heard from an
informant at Lahore.

H. P.
BLAVATSKY.

THE ARYA SAMAJ

CHRISTENDOM sends its
missionaries to Heathendom at an expense of millions drained from the pockets
of would-be pious folks, who court respectability. Thousands of homeless and
penniless old men, women and children are allowed to starve for lack of funds,
for the sake, perhaps, of one converted “heathen.” All the spare money of the
charitable is absorbed by these dead-head travelling agents of the Christian
Church. What is the result? Visit the prison cells of so-called Christian
lands, crammed with delinquents who have been led on to felony by the weary path
of starvation, and you will have the answer.

Read in the daily papers the
numerous accounts of executions, and you will find that modern Christianity
offers, perhaps unintentionally but none the less surely, a premium for murder
and other heinous crimes. Is anyone prepared to deny the assertion? Remember
that, while many a respectable unbeliever dies in his bed with the comfortable
assurance from his next of kin, and good friends in general, that he is going to
hell, the red-handed criminal has but to believe at his eleventh hour that the
blood of the Saviour can and will save him, to receive the guarantee of his
spiritual adviser that he will find himself when launched into eternity in the
bosom of Christ, in heaven, and playing upon the traditional harp. Why, then,
should any Christian deny himself the pleasure and profit of robbing, or even
murdering, his richer neighbour? And such a doctrine is being promulgated among
the heathen at the cost of an annual expenditure of millions.

But, in her eternal wisdom,
Nature provides antidotes against moral as well as against mineral and vegetable
poisons. There are people who do not content themselves with preaching
grandiloquent discourses; they act. If such books as Higgins’ Anacalypsis, and
that extraordinary work of an anonymous English author—a bishop, it is
whispered—entitled Supernatural Religion, cannot awaken responsive

185————————————————————THE ARYA SAMAJ.

echoes among the ignorant
masses, other means can be, and are resorted to—means more effectual and which
will bring fruit in the future, if hitherto prevented by the crushing hand of
ecclesiastical and monarchical despotism. Those whom the written proofs of the
fictitious character of biblical authority cannot reach, may be saved by the
spoken word. And this work of disseminating the truth among the more ignorant
classes is being ardently prosecuted by an army of devoted scholars and
teachers, simultaneously in India and America.

The Theosophical Society has
been of late so much spoken about; such idle tales have been circulated about
it—its members being sworn to secrecy and hitherto unable, even if willing, to
proclaim the truth about it—that the public may be gratified to know, at least,
about one portion of its work. It is now in organized affiliation with the Arya
Samâj of India, its Western representative, and, so to say, under the order of
its chiefs. A younger Society than the Brâhmo Samaj it was instituted to save the
Hindu from exoteric idolatries, Brâhmanism and Christian missionaries.

The purely Theistic movement
connected with the Brâhmo Samâj had its origin in the same idea. It began early
in the present century, but spasmodically and with interruption, and only took
concrete shape under the leadership of Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen in 1858. Rammo
bun Roy, who may be termed the combined Fénelon and Thomas Paine of Hindustan, was its
parent, his first church having been organized shortly before his death in 1833.
One of the greatest and most acute of controversial writers that our century
has produced, his works ought to be translated and circulated in every civilized
land. At his death, the work of the Brâhmo Samâj was interrupted. As Miss
Collett says, in her Brahmo Year Book for 1878, it was only in October, 1839,
that Debendra Nath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhini Sabhâ (or Society for the
Knowledge of Truth), which lasted for twenty years, and did much to arouse the
energies and form the principles of the young church of the Brahmo Samaj. But
exoteric or open religion as it is now, it must have been conducted at first
much on the principles of the secret societies, as we are informed that
Keshub Chunder Sen, a resident of Calcutta and a pupil of the Presidency
College, who had long before quitted the orthodox Brâhmanical Church and was
searching for a purely Theistic religion, “had never heard of the Brâhmo Samâj
before 1858” (see The Theistic Annual, 1878, p. 45).

Since then the Brâhmo Samâj,
which he then joined, has flourished

186————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

and become more popular every
day. We now find it with Samâjes established in many provinces and cities. At
least, we learn that in May, 1877, fifty Samâjes have notified their adhesion to
the Society and eight of them have appointed their representatives. Native
missionaries of the Theistic religion oppose the Christian missionaries and the
orthodox Brâhmans, and the work is going on livelily. So much for the Brâhmo
movement.

And now, with regard to the
Arya Samâj, The Indian Tribune uses the following language in speaking of its
founder:

The first quarter of the
sixteenth century was no more an age of reformation in Europe than the one we
now live in is, at this moment, in India. from amongst its own “Benedictines,”
Swami Dyanand Saraswati has arisen, who, unlike other reformers, does not wish
to set up a new religion of his own, but asks his country men to go back to the
pristine purity and Theism of their Vedic religion. After preaching his views
in Bombay, Poona, Calcutta, and the N. -W. Provinces, he came to the Punjab
last year, and here it is that he found the most congenial soil.

It was in the land of the five
rivers, on the banks of the Indus, that the Vedas were first compiled. It was
the Punjah that gave birth to a Nanak. And it is the Punjab that is making such
efforts for a revival of Vedic learning and its doctrines. And wherever Swami
Dyanand goes, his splendid physique, his manly bearing, eloquence and his
incisive logic tear down all opposition. People rise up and say: We shall remain no longer in
this state for ourselves, we have bad enough of a crafty priesthood and a
demoralizing idolatry, and we shall tolerate them no longer. We shall wipe off
the ugliness of ages, and try to shine forth in the original radiance and
effulgence of our Aryan ancestors.

The Svami is a most highly
honoured Fellow of the Theosophical Society, takes a deep interest in its
proceedings, and The Indian Spectator of Bombay, April 14th, 1878, spoke by the
book when it said that the work of Pundit Dyanand “bears intimate relation to
the work of the Theosophical Society.”

While the members of the Brâhmo Samaj may be designated as the Lutheran Protestants of orthodox
Brâhmanism, the disciples of the Svami Dyanand should be compared to those
learned mystics, the Gnostics, who had the key to those earlier writings which,
later, were worked over into the Christian gospels and various patristic
literature. As the above-named pre-Christian sects understood the true esoteric
meaning of the Chrestos allegory, which is now materialized into the Jesus of
flesh, so the disciples of the learned and holy Svami are taught to discriminate
between the written form and the spirit of the word preached in the Vedas. And this
is the principal point of difference between the Arya Samâj and the Brâhmos
who, as it would seem, believe

187———————————————————THE ARYA SAMAJ

in a personal God and repudiate
the Vedas, while the Aryas see an everlasting Principle, an impersonal Cause in
the great “Soul of the universe” rather than a personal being, and accept the
Vedas as supreme authority, though not of divine origin. But we may better quote
in elucidation of the subject what the President of the Bombay Arya Samâj, also
a Fellow of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Hurrychund Chintamon, says in a recent
letter to our Society:

Pundit Dyanand maintains that
as it is now universally acknowledged that the Vedas are the oldest books of
antiquity, if they contain the truth and nothing but the truth in all
unmutilated state, and nothing new can be found in other works of later date,
why should we not accept the Vedas as a guide for Humanity?
. . A revealed book or revelation
is understood to mean one of two things, Viz.: (1) a book already written by
some invisible hand and thrown into the world; or (2) a work written by one or
more men while they were in their highest state of mental lucidity, acquired by
profound meditation upon the problems of who man is, whence he came, whither
he must go, and by what means he may emancipate himself from worldly delusions
and sufferings. The latter hypothesis may be regarded as the more rational and
correct.

Our Brother Hurrychund here
describes those superior men whom we know as Adepts. He adds:

The ancient inhabitants of a
place near Thibet, and adjoining a lake called Mansovara, were first called
Deveneggury (Devanâgari) or godlike people. Their written characters were also
called Deveneggury or Balbadha letters. A portion of them migrated to the North
and settled there, and afterwards spread towards the South, while others went to
the West. All these emigrants styled themselves Aryans, or noble, pure, and
good men, as they considered that a pure gift had been made to humanity from
the “Pure Alone.” These lofty souls were the authors of the Vedas.

What more reasonable than the
claim that such Scriptures, emanating from such authors, should contain, for
those who are able to penetrate the meaning that lies half concealed under the
dead letter, all the wisdom which it is allowed to men to acquire on earth? The
Chiefs of the Arya Samâj discredit “miracles,” discountenance superstition and
all violation of natural law, and teach the purest form of Vaidic Philosophy.
Such are the allies of the Theosophical Society. They have said to us: “Let us
work together for the good of mankind,” and we will.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

PARTING WORDS—————

[From The Religio-Philosophical
Journal, July 6th, 1878.]

So far as I can at present
foresee, this will be the last time I shall ask you to print anything over my,
to many Spiritualists, loathed signature, as I intend to start for India very
soon. But I have once more to correct inaccurate statements. If I had had my
choice, I would have preferred almost any other person than my very esteemed
friend Dr. Bloede, to have last words with. Once an antagonist, a bitter and
unjust one to me, as he himself admits, he has since made all the amends I could
have asked of a scholar and a gentleman, and now, as all who read your valuable
paper see, he does me the honour to call me friend. Honest in intent he always
is, I am sure, but still a little prejudiced. Who of us but is so, more or less?
Duty, therefore, compels me to correct the erroneous impression which his letter
on “Secret Societies” (Journal of June 15th) is calculated to give about the
Theosophical Society. How many “Fellows” we have, how the Society is
flourishing, what are its operations or how conducted, no one knows or can know,
save the presidents of its various branches and their secretaries. Therefore,
Dr. G. Bloede, in saying that it has “failed in America and will fail in
Europe,” speaks of that of which neither he nor any other outsider has
knowledge. If the Society’s only object were the study of the phenomena called
Spiritual, his strictures would be perfectly warranted; for it is not secrecy
but privacy and exclusiveness that are demanded in the management of circles and
mediums. It would have been absurd to make a secret society expressly for that
purpose. At its beginning the Theosophical Society was started for that sole
study, and therefore was, as you all know, open to any respectable person who
wished to join it. We discussed “spiritual” topics freely, and were willing
to impart to the public the results of all our experiments, and whatever some
of us might have learned of the subject in the course of long studies. How our
views and philosophy

189————————————————————PARTING WORDS.

were received—no need to recall
the old story again. The storm has already subsided; and the total of
“Billingsgate” poured upon our devoted heads is preserved in three gigantic
scrap-books whose contents I mean to immortalize some day. When through the
writing and noble efforts of the Journal and other spiritual papers the secret
of these varied and vexing phenomena, indiscriminately called spiritual, will be
snatched at last, when the faithful of the orthodox church of Spiritualism will
be forced to give up—partially at least—their many bigoted and preconceived
notions, then the time will have come again for Theosophists to claim a hearing.
Till then, its members retire from the arena of discussion and devote their
whole leisure to the fulfilment of other and more important objects of the
Society.

You perceive, then, that it is
only when experience showed the necessity for its work to be enlarged, and its
objects became various, that the T. S. thought fit to protect itself by secrecy.
Since then, none but perjured witnesses, and we know of none, can have told
about what we were doing, except as permitted by official sanction and announced
from time to time. One of such objects of our Society we are willing to publicly
announce.

It is universally known that
this most important object is to antagonize Christianity* and especially
Jesuitism. One of our most esteemed and valued members, once an ardent
Spiritualist, but who must for the present be nameless, has but recently fallen
a victim to the snares of this hateful body.

The
nefarious designs of Jesuitism are plotted in secret and carried out through
secret agencies. What more reasonable and lawful, there fore, than that those
who wish to fight it should keep their own secret, likewise, as to their
agencies and plans? We have
among us persons in high position—political, military, financial and social—who
regard Christianity as the greatest evil to humanity, and are willing to help
pull it down. But for them to be able to do much and well, they must do it
anonymously. The Church—”triple-headed snake” as a well known writer calls it—can
no longer burn its enemies, but it can blast their social influence; can no
longer roast their bodies, but can ruin their fortunes. We have no right to give
our enemy, the Church, the names of our “Fellows,” who are not ripe for
martyrdom, and so we—————

* [In later days H. P. B. took
great pains to explain that the ‘christianity’ which she so vigorously attacked,
was all ecclesiastical system of dogmas to which she subsequently
gave the name ‘‘churchianity,’’ and not the spiritual and moral teachings of
Jesus.—Ens.]

190————————————————————A
MODERN PANARION.

keep them secret. If we have an
agent to send to India or to Japan, or China, or any other heathen country, to
do something or confer with somebody in connection with the Society’s general
plans against missionaries, it would be foolish, nay, criminal, to expose our
agent to imprisonment under some malicious pretext, if not death, and even the
latter is possible in the far-away East, and our scheme is liable to miscarry by
announcing it to the dishonourable company of Jesus.

So, sir, to
sum up in a word, Dr. Bloede has made a great mistake in supposing the
Theosophical Society a “failure” in this or any other country. Where the Society
counted three years ago its members by the dozen, it now counts them by the
hundred and thousand. And so far from its threatening in any respect the
stability of society or the advancement of spiritual knowledge, the Theosophical
institution which now bears the name of the “Theosophical Society of the Arya
Samâj of India” (being regularly chartered by and affiliated with that great
body in the land of the Aryas) will be found some day, by the Spiritualists and
all others who claim the right of thinking for them selves, to have been the
true friend of intellectual and spiritual liberty—if not in America, at least in
France and other countries, where an infernal priesthood thrusts innocent
Spiritualists into prison by the help of a subservient judiciary and the use of
perjured testimony. Its name will be respected as a pioneer of free thought and
an uncompromising enemy of priestly and monkish fraud and despotism.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

New York, June 17th, 1878.

“NOT A CHRISTIAN”—————

[From the Indian
Spectator.]

BEFORE entering upon the main
question that compels me to ask you kindly to accord me space in your esteemed
paper, will you inform me as to the nature of that newly-horn infant prodigy
which calls itself The Bombay Review? Is it a bigoted, sectarian organ of the
Christians, or an impartial journal, fair to all, and unprejudiced as every
respectable paper styling itself “Review” ought to be, especially in a place
like Bombay, where such a diversity of religious opinions is to be found? The
two paragraphs in the number of February 22nd, which so honour the Theosophical
Society by a double notice of its American members, would force me to incline
toward the former opinion. Both the editorial which attacks my esteemed friend,
Miss Bates, and the apocalyptic vision of the modern Ezekiel, alias
“Anthroposophist,” who shoots his rather blunt arrows at Col. Olcott, require an
answer, if it were but to show the advisability of using sharper darts against
Theosophists. Leaving the seer to his prophetic dream of langoutis and cow-dung,
I will simply review the editorial of this Review which tries to be at the same
time satirical and severe and succeeds only in being nonsensical. Quoting from
another paper a sentence relating to Miss Bates, which describes her as “not a
Christian,” it remarks in that bitter and selfish spirit of arrogance and
would-be superiority, which so characterizes Christian sectarianism:

The public might have been spared
the sight of the italicized personal explanation.

What “public” may I ask? The
majority of the intelligent and reading public—especially of native papers—in
Bombay as throughout India is, we believe, composed of non-Christians—of Parsis, Hindus, etc. And this public instead of resenting such “wanton aggressiveness,” as the writer pleases to call it, call but rejoice to find at least one
European lady, who, at the same time that she is not a Christian,

194————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

is quite ready, as a
Theosophist, to call any respectable “heathen” her brother, and regard him with
at least as much sympathy as she does a Christian. But this unfortunate thrust
at Theosophy is explained by what follows:

In the young lady’s own
interest the insult ought not to have been flung into the teeth of the Christian
public.

Without taking into
consideration the old and wise axiom, that honesty is the best policy, we can
only regret for our Christian opponents that they should so soon “unveil” their
cunning policy. While in the eyes of every honest “heathen” Theosophist, there
can be no higher recommendation for a person than to have the reputation of
being truthful even at the expense of his or her “interest,” our Christian
Review unwittingly exposes the concealed rope of the mission machinery, by
admitting that it is in the interest of every person here, at least—to appear a
Christian or a possible convert, if he is not one de facto. We feel really very,
very grateful to the Review for such a timely and generous confession. The
writer’s defence of the “public” for which it speaks as one having authority is
no less vague and unsatisfactory, as we all know that among the 240,000,000 of
native population in India, Christians count but as a drop in an ocean. Or is it
possible that no other public but the Christian is held worthy of the name or
even of consideration? Had converted Brâhmans arrived here instead of
Theosophists, and one of these announced his profession of faith by italicizing
the words, not a heathen, we doubt whether the fear of hurting the feelings of
many millions of Hindus would have ever entered the mind of our caustic
paragraphist!

Nor do we find the sentence,
“India owes too much to Christianity,” anything but arrogant and presumptuous
talk. India owes much and everything to the British Government, which protects
its heathen subjects equally with those of English birth, and would no more
allow the one class to insult the other than it would revive the Inquisition.
India owes to Great Britain its educational system, its slow but sure progress,
and its security from the aggression of other nations; to Christianity it owes
nothing. And yet perhaps I am mistaken, and ought to have made one exception.
India owes to Christianity its mutiny of 1857, which threw it back for a
century. This we assert on the authority of general opinion and of Sir John Kay,
who declares, in his Sepoy War, that the mutiny resulted from the intolerance of
the crusading missions and the silly talk of the Friend of India.

195————————————————————“NOT A CHRISTIAN”!

I have done; adding but one
more word of advice to the Review. In the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, when the latest international revision of the Bible—that infallible
and revealed Word of God !—reveals 64,000 mistranslations and other mistakes, it
is not the Theosophists—a large number of whose members are English patriots
and men of learning—but rather the Christians who ought to beware of “wanton
aggressiveness” against people of other creeds. Their boomerangs may fly back
from some unexpected parabola and hit the throwers.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Bombay, Feb. 25th, 1879.

THE RETORT COURTEOUS

[From the Indian
Spectator.]

THERE is a story current among
the Yankees of a small school boy, who, having been thrashed by a bigger fellow
and being unable to hit him back, consoled himself by making faces at his
enemy’s sister. Such is the position of my opponent of the world-famed Bombay
Review. Realizing the impossibility of injuring the Theosophical Society, he
“makes faces” at its Corresponding Secretary, flinging at her personal abuse.

Unfortunately for my masked
enemies and fortunately for myself, I have five years’ experience in fighting
American newspapers, any one of which, notwithstanding the grandiloquent style
of the “Anthroposophists,” “B.’s” and “Onesimuses” is any day more than a
match in humour, and especially in wit, for a swarm of such pseudonymous wasps
as work on the Review. If I go to the trouble of noticing their last Saturday’s
curry of weak arguments and impertinent personalities at all, it is simply with
the object of proving once more that it requires more wit than seems to be at
their command to compel my silence. Abuse is no argument; moreover, if applied
indiscriminately it may prove dangerous sometimes.

Hence, I intend noticing but
one particular point. As to their conceit, it is very delightful to behold!
What a benevolent tone of patronage combined with modesty is theirs! How
refreshing in hot weather to hear them saying of oneself:

We have been more charitable to
her than she seems subsequently to deserve [!!].

Could dictatorial magnanimity
be carried further? And this dithyrambic, which forces one’s recognition of
the worth of the mighty ones “of broad and catholic views,” who control the
fates of The Bombay Review, and have done in various ways so much “for the races
of India” ! One might fancy he heard the “spirits” of Lord Mayo and Sir William
Jones themselves blowing through the pipes of this earth shaking organ.

197————————————————————THE
RETORT COURTEOUS.

Has it acquired its reverberant
diapason from the patronage of all the native princes whose favours it so
eagerly sought a while ago?

I have neither leisure nor
desire to banter penny-a-line wit with such gold-medal experts, especially when
I honestly write above my own signature and they hide themselves behind secure
pseudonyms. Therefore, I will leave their claptrap about “weeds and Madame Sophy”
to be digested by themselves, and notice but the insinuation about “Russian
spies.” I agree with the Review editor when he says that it is the business of
Sir Richard Temple and Sir Frank Souter to take care of such “spies.” And I will
further add that it is these two gentlemen alone who have the right or the
authority to denounce such people.

No other person, were he even
the noblest of the lords instead of an anonymous writer, can or will be allowed
to throw out such a malicious and mischievous hint about a woman and a citizen
of the United States. He who does it risks being brought to the bar of that most
just of all tribunals—a British Court. And if either of my ambuscaders wishes to
test the question, pray let him put his calumny in some tangible shape. Such a
vile innuendo—even when shaped into the sham-denial of a bazaar rumour, becomes
something more serious than whole folios of the “flapdoodle” (the stuff—as
sailors say—upon which fools are fed) which the Review’s Christian Shâstris
serve up against Theosophy and Theosophists. In the interest of that youthful
and boisterous paper itself, we hope that henceforth it will get its information
from a more reliable source than the Bombay market places.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Bombay, March 14th, 1879.

“SCRUTATOR” AGAIN

[Probably from the London
Spiritualist.]

IF
my memory has not altogether
evaporated under the combined influences of this blazing Indian sun and the
frequent misconstructions of your correspondents, there occurred, in March,
1878, an epistolary skirmish between one who prudently conceals his face behind
the two masks of “Scrutator” and “M.A. Cantab.,” and your humble servant. He
again attacks me in the character of my London Nemesis. Again he lets fly a
Parthian shaft from behind the fence of one of his pseudonyms. Again he has
found a mare’s nest in my garden—a chronological, instead of a metaphysical one
this time. He is exercised about my age, as though the value of my statements
would be in the least affected by either rejuvenating me to infancy, or ageing
me into a double centenarian. He has read in the Revue Spirite for October last
a sentence in which, discussing this very point, I say that I have not passed
thirty years in India. And that:

I reproduce the sentence
exactly as it appears, with the sole exception of restoring the period after
“l’Inde” in the place of the comma, which is simply a typographical mistake. The
capital C which immediately follows would have conveyed to anyone except a
“Scrutator” my exact meaning, viz., that my age itself, however respectable, is
opposed to the idea that I had passed thirty years in India.

I do hope that my ever-masked
assailant will devote some leisure to the study of French as well as of
punctuation before he attacks again.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Bombay, Feb., 1879.

MAGIC—————

[From The Deccan
Star, March 30th,
1879.]

IN
The Indian Tribune of March
15th appears a letter upon the relations of the Theosophical Society with the
Arya Samâj. The writer seems neither an enemy of our cause, nor hostile to the
Society; therefore I will try in a gentle spirit to correct certain
misapprehensions under which he labours.

As he signs himself “A Member,”
he must, therefore, be regarded by us as a Brother. And yet he seems moved by an
unwarranted fear to a hasty repudiation of too close a connection between our
Society and his Samâj, lest the fair name of the latter be compromised before
the public by some strange notions of ours. He says:

I have been surprised to hear
that the Society embraces people who believe in magic. Should this, however, be
the belief of the Theosophical Society, I could only assure your readers that
the Arya Samâj is not in common with them in this respect. Only as far as Vedic
learning and Vedic philosophy is concerned, their objects may be said to be
similar.

It is these very points I now
mean to answer.

The gist of the whole question
is as to the correct definition of the word “Magic,” and understanding of what
Vaidic “learning and philosophy” are. If by Magic is meant the popular
superstitious belief in sorcery, witchcraft and ghosts in general; if it
involves the admission that supernatural feats may be performed; if it requires
faith in miracles—that is to say, phenomena
outside natural law; then, on behalf of every Theosophist, whether a sceptic yet
unconverted, a believer in and student of phenomena pure and simple, or even a
modern Spiritualist so-called—i.e., one who believes mediumistic phenomena to
be necessarily caused by returning human Spirits—we emphatically repudiate the
accusation.

We did not see The Civil and
Military Gazette, which seems so well acquainted with our doctrines; but if it
meant to accuse any Theo-

200————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

sophists of any such belief,
then, like many other Gazettes and Reviews, it talked of that which it knew
nothing about.

Our Society believes in no
miracle, diabolical or human, nor in any-thing which eludes the grasp of either
philosophical and logical induction, or the syllogistic method of deduction. But
if the corrupted and comparatively modern term of “Magic” is understood to mean
the higher study and knowledge of Nature and deep research into her hidden
powers—those Occult and mysterious laws which constitute the ultimate essence of
every element—whether with the ancients we recognize but four or five, or with
the moderns over sixty; or, again, if by Magic is meant that ancient study
within the sanctuaries, known as the “worship of the Light,” or divine and
spiritual wisdom—as distinct from the worship of darkness or ignorance—which led
the initiated High-priests of antiquity among the Aryans, Chaldæans,
Medes and
Egyptians to be called Maha, Magi or Maginsi, and by the Zoroastrians Meghistam
(from the root Meh’ah, great, learned, wise)—then, we Theosophists “plead
guilty.”

We do study that “Science of
sciences,” extolled by the Eclectics and Platonists of the Alexandrian Schools,
and practised by the Theurgists and the Mystics of every age. If Magic
gradually fell into disrepute, it was not because of its intrinsic
worthlessness, but through misconception and ignorance of its primitive meaning,
and especially the cunning policy of Christian theologians, who feared lest many
of the phenomena produced by and through natural (though Occult) law should
give the direct lie to, and thus cheapen, ‘‘Divine biblical miracle,” and so
forced the people to attribute every manifestation that they could not
comprehend or explain to the direct agency of a personal devil. As well accuse
the renowned Magi of old of having had no better knowledge of divine truth and
the hidden powers and possibilities of physical law than their successors, the
uneducated Parsi Mobeds, or the Hindu Mahârâjahs of that shameless sect known
as the Vallabhâchâryas, both of whom yet derive their appellation from the
Persian word Mog or Mag, and the Sanskrit Mahâ. More than one glorious truth has
thus tumbled down through human ignorance from the sublime unto the ridiculous.

Plato, and even the sceptical
Lucian, both recognized the high wisdom and profound learning of the Magi; and
Cicero, speaking of those who inhabited Persia in his times, calls them “
sapientium et doctorum genus majorum.” And if so, we must evidently believe
that

201———————————————————————MAGIC.

these Magi or “magicians” were
not such as London sees at a shilling a seat—nor yet certain fraudulent
spiritual mediums. The Science of such Theurgists and Philosophers as
Pythagoras, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Bruno, Paracelsus, and a host of other
great men, has now fallen into disrepute. But had our Brother Theosophist,
Thomas Alva Edison. the inventor of the telephone and the phonograph, lived in
the days of Galileo, he would have surely expiated on the rack or at the stake
his sin of having found the means to fix on a soft surface of metal, and
preserve for long years, the sounds of the human voice, for his talent would
have been pronounced the gift of hell. And yet, such an abuse of brute power to
suppress truth would not have changed a scientific discovery into a foolish and
disreputable superstition.

But our friend “A Member,”
consenting to descend to our level in one point at least, admits himself that in
‘‘Vedic learning and philosophy” the Arya Samâj and the Theosophical Society
are upon a common ground. Then, I have something to appeal to as an authority
which will be better still than the so-much-derided Magic, Theurgy and Alchemy.
It is the Vedas themselves, for “Magic” is brought into every line of the
sacred books of the Aryans. Magic is indispensable for the comprehension of
either of the six great schools of Aryan philosophy. And it is precisely to
understand them, and thus enable our selves to bring to light the hidden summum
bonum of that mother of all Eastern Philosophies known as the Vedas, and the
later Brâhmanical literature, that we study it. Neglect this study, and we, in
common with all Europe, would have to set Max Muller’s interpretations of the
Vedas far above those of Svami Dyanand Sarasvati, as given in his Veda .Bhashya.
And we would have to let the Anglo-German Sanskritist go uncontradicted, when
he says that with the exception of the Rik, none other of the four sacred books
is deserving of the name of Veda, especially the Atharva Veda, which is absurd,
magical nonsense, composed of sacrificial formulas, charms and incantations see
his Lecture on the Vedas). This is, therefore, why, disregarding every
misconception, we humbly beg to be allowed to follow the analytical method of
such students and practitioners of “Magic” as Kapila— mentioned in the
Shvetashvatara
Upanishad as
The Rishi nourished with
knowledge by the God himself—
Patanjali, the great authority of the Yoga, Shankarâchârya of theurgic memory, and even Zoroaster,
who certainly learned his wisdom from the initiated Brâhmans of Aryavarta. And
we do not see why, for

202————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

that, we should be held up to
the world’s scorn, as either superstitious fools or hallucinated enthusiasts, by
our own brother of the Arya Samâj. I will say more. While the latter is,
perhaps, in common with other “members” of the same Samâj, unable and perfectly
Helpless to defend Svami Dyanand against the sophistry of such partial scoffers
as a certain Pandit Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna, of Calcutta, who would have us
believe the Veda Bhashya a futile attempt at interpretation; we, Theosophists,
do not shrink from assuming the burden. When the Svami affirms that Agni and
Ishvara are identical, the Calcutta Pandit calls it “stuff.” To him Agni means
the coarse, visible fire, with which one melts his ghee and cooks his rice
cakes. Apparently he does not know, as he might, if he had studied “Magic”—
that is to say, had familiarized himself with the views about the divine Fire or
Light, “whose external body is Flame,” held by the mediæval Rosicrucians (the
Fire-Philosophers) and all their initiated predecessors and successors—that the
Vedic Agni is in fact and deed Ishvara and nothing else. The Svami makes no
mistake when he says:

For Agni is all the deities and
Vishnu is all the deities. For these two [divine] bodies, Agni and Vishnu, are the two
ends of the sacrifice.

At one end of the ladder which
stretches from heaven to earth is Ishvara—Spirit, Supreme Being, subjective,
invisible and incomprehensible; at the other his visible manifestation,
“sacrificial fire.”

So well has this been
comprehended by every religious Philosophy of antiquity that the enlightened
Parsi worships not gross flame, but the divine Spirit within, of which it is the
visible type; and even in the Jewish Bible there is the unapproachable Jehovah
and his down-rushing fire which consumes the wood upon the altar and licks up
the water in the trench about it ( I Kings, xviii. 38). There is also the visible
manifestation of God in the burning bush of Moses, and the Holy Ghost, in the
Gospels of the Christians, descending like tongues of flame upon the heads of
the assembled disciples on the day of Pentecost. There is not an Esoteric
Philosophy or rather Theosophy, which did not apprehend this deep spiritual
idea, and each and all are traceable to the Vaidic sacred books. Says the author
of The Rosicrucians in his chapter on “The Nature of Fire,” and quoting R. Fludd, the mediæval Theosophist and Alchemist:

Wonder no longer then, if, in
the religions of the Aryans, Medes and Zoroastrians, rejected so long as an
idolatry, the ancient Persians and their masters, the Magi, concluding that
they saw ‘‘All” in this supernaturally magnificent Element

203————————————————————————MAGIC.

[fire] fell down and worshipped it;
making of it the visible representation of the truest, but yet, in man’s
speculations, in his philosophies, nay, in his commonest reason, impossible God;
God being everywhere and in us, and indeed us, in the God-lighted man, and
impossible to be contemplated or known outside, being All.

This is the teaching of the
mediæval Fire-Philosophers known as the Brothers of the Rosie-Cross, such as
Paracelsus, Kunrath, Van Helmont, and that of all the Illuminati and Alchemists
who succeeded these, and who claimed to have discovered the eternal Fire, or to
have “found out God in the Immortal Light”—that light whose radiance shone
through the Yogis. The same author remarks of them:

Already, in their determined
climbing unto the heights of thought, had these Titans of mind achieved, past
the cosmical through the shadowy borders of the Real and Unreal, into Magic. For
is Magic wholly false?

—he goes on to ask. No;
certainly not, when by Magic is understood the higher study of divine, and yet
not supernatural law, though the latter be, as yet, undiscovered by exact and
materialistic phenomena, such as those which are believed in by nearly twenty
millions of well- educated, often highly enlightened and learned persons in
Europe and America. These are as real, and as well authenticated by the
testimony of thousands of unimpeached witnesses, and as scientifically and
mathematically proved as the latest discoveries of our Brother T. A. Edison. If
the term “fool” is applicable to such men of Science and giants of intellect of
the two hemispheres, as W. Crookes, F.R.S., Alfred Russel Wallace, the greatest
Naturalist of Europe and a successful rival of Darwin, and as Flammarion, the
French Astronomer, Member of the Academy of Sciences of France, and Professor
Zöllner, the celebrated Leipzig Astronomer and Physicist, and Professor Hare,
the great Chemist of America, and many another no less eminent Scientist,
unquestioned authorities upon any other question but the so-called spiritual
phenomena, and all firm Spiritualists themselves, often converted only after
years of careful investigation—then, indeed, we Theosophists would not find
ourselves in bad company, and would deem it an honour to be called “fools” were
we even firm orthodox Spiritualists ourselves—i.e., believers in perambulating
ghosts and materialized bhuts—which we are not. But we are believers in the
phenomena of the Spiritualists (even if we do doubt their “spirits”), for we
happen to know them to be actual facts. It is one thing to reject unproved
theory, and quite another to battle against well-established facts. Everyone
has a right to doubt, until further and stronger

204————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

evidence, whether these modern
phenomena which are inundating the Western countries, are all produced by
disembodied “spirits”—for it happens to be hitherto a mere speculative doctrine
raised up by enthusiasts; but no one is authorized—unless he can bring to
contradict the fact, something better and weightier than the mere negations of sceptics—to deny that
such phenomena do
occur. If we Theosophists (and a very small minority of us), disclaim the agency
of “spirits” in such manifestations, it is because we can prove in most
instances to the Spiritualists, that many of their phenomena, whether of
physical or psychological nature, can be reproduced by some of our Adepts at
will, and without any aid of “spirits” or resort to either divine or diabolical
miracle, but simply by developing the Occult powers of the man’s Inner Self and
studying the mysteries of Nature. That European and American sceptics should
deny such interference by Spirits, and, as a consequence discredit the phenomena
themselves, is no cause for wonder. Scarcely liberated from the clutches of the
Church, whose terrible policy, barely a century ago, was to torture and put to
death every person who either doubted biblical “divine” miracle, or endorsed one
which theology declared diabolical, it is but the natural force of reaction
which makes them revel in their new-found liberty of thought and action. One who
denies the Supreme and the existence of his own Soul, is not likely to believe
in either Spirits or phenomena, without abundant proof. But that Eastern people,
Hindus especially, of any sect, should disbelieve, is indeed an anomaly,
considering that they all are taught the transmigration of Souls, and spiritual
as well as physical evolution. The sixteenth chapter of the Mahabhárata,
Harivansha Parva, is full of spiritual phenomena and the raising of Spirits. And
if, ashamed of the now termed “superstitions” of their forefathers, young India
turns, sunflower-like, but to the great luminaries of the West, this is what one
of the most renowned men of Science of England, A. R. Wallace—a Fellow of the
Royal as well as a member of the Theosophical Society—says of the phenomena in
his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, and On Miracles and
Modern Spiritualism, thus confirming the belief of old India:

Up to the time when I first
became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism, I was a confirmed
philosophical sceptic. I was so thorough and confirmed a Materialist, that I
could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual
existence, or for any other genesis in the universe than matter and force.
Facts, however, “are stubborn things.”

205———————————————————————MAGIC.

Having explained how he came to
become a Spiritualist, he considers the spiritual theory and shows its
compatibility with natural selection. Having, he says:

Been led, by a strict induction
from facts, to a belief—firstly, in the existence of a number of preter-human
intelligences of various grades; and secondly, that some of these intelligences,
although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on matter, and
do influence our minds—I am surely following a strictly logical and scientific
course, in seeing how far this doctrine will enable us to account for some of
those residual phenomena which Natural Selection alone will not explain. In the
tenth chapter of my Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection I have
pointed out what I consider to be some of these residual phenomena; and I have
suggested that they may be due to the action of some of the various
intelligences above referred to. I maintained, and still maintain, that this view is one which is logically tenable, and
is in no way inconsistent with a thorough
acceptance of the grand doctrine of evolution through Natural Selection.

Would not one think he hears in
the above the voices of Manu, Kapila and many other Philosophers of old India,
in their teachings about the creation, evolution and growth of our planet and
its living world of animal as well as human species? Does the great modern
Scientist speak less of “Spirits” and spiritual beings than Manu, the
antediluvian scientist and prehistoric legislator? Let young and sceptical
India read and compare the old Aryan ideas with those of modern Mystics,
Theosophists, Spiritualists, and a few great Scientists, and then laugh at the
superstitious theories of both.

For four years we have been
fighting out our great battle against tremendous odds. We have been abused and
called traitors by the Spiritualists, for believing in other beings in the
invisible world besides their departed Spirits; we were cursed and sentenced to
eternal damnation, with free passports to hell, by the Christians and their
clergy; ridiculed by sceptics, looked upon as audacious lunatics by society, and
tabooed by the conservative press. We thought we had drunk to the dregs the
bitter cup of gall. We had hoped that at least in India, the country par excellence
of psychological and metaphysical Science, we would find firm ground for our
weary feet. But lo! here comes a brother of ours who, without even taking the
trouble to ascertain whether or not the rumours about us are true, in case we
do believe in either Magic or Spiritualism— Well! We impose impose ourselves upon no
one. For more than four years we lived and waxed in power if not in
wisdom—which latter our humble deputation of Theosophists was sent to search for
here, so that we might impart ‘‘Vaidic learning and

206————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

philosophy” to the millions of
famished souls in the West, who are familiar with phenomena, but wrongly suffer
themselves to be misled through their mistaken notions about ghosts and bhuts. But
if we are to be repulsed at the outset by any considerable party of Arya Samâjists, who share the views of “A Member,” then will the Theosophical Society,
with its 45,000 or so of Western Spiritualists, have to become again a distinct
and independent body, and do as well as it can without a single “member” to
enlighten it on the absurdity of Spiritualism and Magic.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Bombay, March, 1879.

A REPUBLICAN CITIZEN—————

[From The Banner of Light, May
13th
1879, but addressed to the Editor of

The Bombay Gazette.]

ON the very day of my return
from a month’s travel, I am shown by the American Consul two paragraphs, viz.,
one in your paper of the 10th inst., which mentions me as the “Russian
‘Baroness,’” and one in The Times of India of the 8th, whose author had tried
hard to be witty but only succeeded in being impertinent and calumnious. In this
last paragraph I am referred to as a woman who called herself a “Russian
Princess.”

With the
original and selected matter in your contemporary you, of course, have nothing
to do. If the editor can find “amusing” such slanderous tomfooleries as the
extract in question from The Colonial Gazette and Star of India, and risk a suit for libel for
circulating defamations of a respectable scientific Society, and vilifying its
honoured President by calling him a “secret detective”—an outrageous lie, by the
way—that is not your affair. My present business is to take the Gazette to task
for thrusting upon my unwilling Republican head the baronial coronet. Know,
please, once for all, that I am neither “Countess,” “Princess,” nor even a
modest “Baroness”—whatever I may have been before last July. At that time I
became a plain citizen of the United States of America. I value that title far
more than any that could be conferred on me by King or Emperor. Being this, I
could be nothing else, if I wished; for, as everyone knows, had I been even a
princess of the royal blood before, once that my oath of allegi- ance was
pronounced, I forfeited every claim to titles of nobility. Apart from this
notorious fact, my experience of things in general, and peacocks’ feathers in
particular, has led me to acquire a positive contempt for titles; since it
appears that, outside the boundaries of their own fatherlands, Russian princes,
Polish counts, Italian marquises and German barons, are far more plentiful
inside than outside the police

208————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

precincts. Permit me further to
state—if only for the edification of The Times of India and a brood of snarling
little papers searching around after the garbage of journalism—that I have never
styled myself aught but what I can prove myself to be, namely, an honest woman,
now a citizen of America, my adopted country, and the only land of true freedom
in the whole world.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Bombay, May 12th.

THE THEOSOPHISTS AND THEIR

OPPONENTS—————

[From The Amrita
Bazar Patrika, June
13th, 1879.]

I PRAY you to give me, in your
Calcutta paper, space enough to reply to the mendacious comments of one of our
religious neighbours upon the Theosophical Society. The Indian Christian Herald,
in the number of April 4th (which unhappily has just now reached my eye), with a
generosity peculiar to religious papers, filled two pages with pious abuse of
our Society as a body. I gather from it, moreover, that The Friend of India had
previously gone out of its way to vilify the Society, since the former paper
observes that:

The Theosophical Society has
merited the epithets employed about it by The Friend of India.

To my everlasting confusion be
it said, that I am guilty of the crime of not only never reading, but also of
never having so much as laid my eyes upon that last named veteran organ. Nor can
any of our Theosophists be charged with abusing the precious privilege of
reading the missionary journals, a considerable time having elapsed since each
of us was weaned, and relinquished milk-and-water pap. Not that we shirk the
somniferous task under the spur of necessity. Were not the proof of our present
writing itself sufficient, I need only cite the case of the Bombay missionary
organ, The Dnyanodaya, which, on the 17th ult., infamously libelled us, and on the
25th was forced by Colonel Olcott’s solicitor, Mr. Turner, to write an ample
apology, in order to avoid a criminal prosecution for defamation of character.
We regret now to see that while the truly good and pious writer of the Herald
was able to rise to the level of Billingsgate, he would not (or dared not?)
climb to the height of actionable slander. Truly prudence is a great virtue!

Confronted, as we all have so
often been, with the intolerant bigotry

210————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

—religious “zeal” they call
it—and puerile anathemas of the clerical “followers of the meek and lowly
Jesus,” no Theosophist is surprised to find the peas from the herald-shooter
rattling against his armour. It adds to the clatter, but no one is mortally
hurt. And, after all, how natural that the poor fellows who try to administer
spiritual food to the benighted heathen—much after the fashion of the Strasburg
goose-fatteners, who thrust balls of meal down the throats of the captive
birds, unmasticated, to swell their livers—should shake at the intrusion of
Europeans who are ready to analyze for the heathen these scripture-balls they
are asked to grease with blind faith and swallow without chewing! People like
us, who would have the effrontery to claim for the “heathen” the same right to
analyze the Bible as the Christian clergy claim to analyze and even to revile
the sacred Scriptures of other people, must of course be put down. And the very
Christian Herald tries his hand. It says:

Let us without any bias or
prejudice reflect ... about the Theosophical Society such a mortal degradation
of persons [ Buddhist, Aryan, Jain, Parsi Hebrew and Mussulman Theosophists,
included?] who can see nothing good in the Bible . . [and who] ought to remember
that the Bible! is not only a blessed book, but our book [!]

The latter piece of
presumptuous conceit cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed. Before I answer the
preceding invectives I mean to demand a clear definition of this last sentence,
“our Book.” Whose Book? The Herald’s? “Our” must mean that; for the seven
thick volumes of the Speaker’s Commentary on the Old Testament *show that the
possessive pronoun and the singular noun in question can no longer be used
by Christians when speaking of the Bible. So numerous and glaring have been the
mistakes and mistranslations detected by the forty divines of the Anglican
Church, during their seven years’ revision of the Old Testament, that the London
Quarterly Review (No. 294, April, 1879), the organ of the most extreme
orthodoxy, is driven in despair to say:

The time has certainly passed
when the whole Bible could be practically esteemed a single book, miraculously communicated in successive portions from heaven, put into writing no doubt by
human hands, but at the dictation of the divine spirit.

So we see beyond question that
if it is anybody’s “Book” it must be The Indian Christian Herald’s; for, in
fact, its editors add:—————

* The Bible, according to the
authorized version (AD.1611), with an explanatory and critical commentary and a
revision of the translation, by bishops and other clergy of the Anglican Church.
Edited by F.C. Cook, MA., Canon of Exeter, Preacher at Lincohn’s Inn, Chaplain
in Ordinary to the Queen. Vols. i.-vi. The Old Testament. London, 1871-1876.

211———————————————THE
THEOSOPHISTS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.

We feel it to be no more a
collection of books, but the book.

But here is another bitter pill
for your contemporary. It says in a pious gush:

The words which had come from
the prophets of the despised Israel have been the life-blood of the world’s
devotion.

But the inexorable quarterly
reviewer, after reluctantly abandoning to the analytical scalpels of Canon Cook
and Bishop Harold Browne the Mosaic miracles—whose supernatural character is no
longer affirmed, but they are allowed to be “natural phenomena”—turns to the pretended Old Testament prophecies of Christ, and sadly says:

In the poetical [psalms and songs]
and the prophetical books especially the number of corrections is enormous.

And he shows how the
commentators upon Isaiah and the other so-called prophets have reluctantly
admitted that the time-worn verses which have been made to serve as predictive
of Christ have in truth no such meaning. He says:

It requires an effort to break
the association, and to realize how much less they [the prophecies] must have
meant at first to the writers themselves. But it is just this that the critical
expositor is bound to do . . . for this some courage is required, for the result
is apt to seem like a disenchantment for the worse, a descent to an inferior
level, a profanation of the paradise in which ardent souls have found spiritual
sustenance and delight.

(Such “souls” as the
Herald
editor’s?) What wonder, then, that the explosion of these seven theological
torpedoes—as the seven volumes of the Speaker’s Commentary may truly be
called—should force the reviewer into saying:

To us, we confess, every
attempt to place the older Scriptures on the same supreme pinnacle on which the
New Testament of later Revelation stands, is doomed to failure.

The Herald is welcome to what
is left of its “Book.”

How childishly absurd it was
then of the Herald to make a whole Society the scapegoat for the sins of one
individual! It is now universally known that the Society comprises fellows of
many nationalities and many different religious faiths, and that its Council is
made up of the representatives of these faiths; yet the Herald endorses the
false hood that the Society’s principles are “a strange compound of Paganism and
Atheism,” and its creed “a creed as comprehensive as it is incomprehensible.”
What other answer does this calumny require than the fact that our President has
publicly declared that it had “no

212————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

creed to offer for the world’s
acceptance,”* and that in art. viii of the Society’s Rules, appended to the
printed Address, in an enumeration of the plans of the Society, the first
paragraph says that it aims:

To keep alive in
man his
belief that he has a soul, and the Universe a God.

If this is a ‘‘compound of
Paganism and Atheism,’’ then let the Heralad make the most of it.

But the Society is not the real
offender; the clerical stones are thrown into my garden. The Herald’s quotation
of an expression used by me, in commenting upon a passage of Sir John Kay’s
Sepoy War making The Friend of India and Co. primarily responsible for that
bloody tragedy, shows the whole animus. It was I who said (see Indian
Spectator, March 2nd) that:

India owes everything to the
British Government and not to Christianity

—i.e., to missionaries. I may
have lost my “senses outright,” as The Indian Christian Herald politely
remarks, but I think have enough left to see through the inane sophistries which
they make do duty for arguments.

We have only to say to the
Herald the following: (1) It is just because we do live in ‘‘an age of
enlightenment and progress,’’ in which there is (or should be) room for every
form of belief, that such Augustinian trades as the Herald’s are out of place.
(2) We have not a Mortal hatred for Christianity
and its Divine Founder,—for the tendency of the
Society is to emancipate its fellows from all hatred or preference for any one
exoteric form of religion—i.e., with more of the human than divine element in
it—over another (see rules) neither can we hate a “Founder” whom the majority of
us do not believe to have ever existed. (3) To “retain” a “reverence for the
Bible” one must at some time have had it, and if our own investigations had not
long since convinced us that the Bible was no more the “Word of God” than half a
dozen other holy hooks, the present conclusions of the Anglican divines—at
least as far as the Old Testament is concerned—would have removed the last
vestige of doubt upon that point. And besides sundry American clergymen and
bishops we have among our Fellows a vicar of the Church of England, who is one
of its most learned antiquarians. (4) The assertion that the

Pure monotheism of the Vedas is
a pure myth—————

* The Theosophical Society and
its Aim. Address delivered by Colonel H. S. Olcott, at the Framji Cowasji Hall, Bombay, March
23rd 1879.

213———————————————THE THEOSOPHISTS AND THEIR
OPPONENTS.

is a pure falsehood, beside
being an insult to Max Muller and other Western Orientalists, who have proved
the fact; to say nothing of that great Aryan scholar, preacher and reformer,
Svami Dyanand Sarasvati.

“Degraded humanity” that we
are, there must he indeed “some thing radically wrong and corrupt” in our “moral
nature,” for, we confess to joy at seeing our Society constantly growing from
accessions of some of the most influential laymen of different countries. And it
moreover delights us to think that when we reach the bottom of the ditch, we
will have as bedfellows half the Christian clergy, if the Speaker’s commentary
makes as sad havoc with the divinity of the New Testament as it has with that
of the Old. Our Indian Christian Pecksniff in righteous indignation exclaims:

How they managed to sink so low
in the scale of moral and spiritual being must be a sadly interesting study for
metaphysicians.

Sad, indeed; but sadder still
to reflect that unless the editors of The Indian Christian Herald are protected
by post-mortem fire-insurance policies, they are in danger themselves of eternal
torment.

Whosoever shall say to
his
brother, Thou fool, shall be in danger of Hell fire,

says Lord Jesus, “the Desire of
nations,” in Matthew, v. 22, unless—dreadful thought!—this verse
should be also found a mistranslation.

H. P.
BLAVATSKY,

Corresponding Secretary of the
Theosophical Society.

[N.B.—We insert the above letter with
great reluctance. The subject matter of the letter is not fit for our columns,
and we have no sympathy with those who attack the religions creed of other men.
The matter of fact is, a Calcutta paper attacks a body of men, and the latter
are thrown at a great disadvantage if they are not allowed an opportunity by
another paper of replying to the attack. It is from that feeling alone that we
have given place to the above letter.—ED. A. B. Patrika.]

ECHOES FROM INDIA.

WHAT IS HINDU SPIRITUALISM?—————

[ From The Banner of
Light, Oct. 18th, 1879.]

PHENOMENA in India—beside the
undoubted interest they offer in themselves, and apart from their great variety
and in most instances utter dissimilarity from those we are accustomed to hear
of in Europe and America—possess another feature which makes them worthy of the
most serious attention of the investigator of Psychology.

Whether Eastern phenomena are
to be accounted for by the immediate interference and help of the spirits of
the departed, or attributed to some other and hitherto unknown cause, is a
question which, for the present, we will leave aside. It can he discussed, with
some degree of confidence, only after many instances have been carefully noted
and submitted, in all their truthful and unexaggerated details, to an impartial
and unprejudiced public. One thing I beg to reaffirm, and this is, that instead
of exacting the usual “conditions” of darkness, harmonious circles, and
nevertheless leaving the witnesses uncertain as to the expected results, Indian
phenomena, if we except the independent apparitions of bhuts (ghosts of the dead),
are never sporadic and spontaneous, but seem to depend entirely upon the will
of the operator, whether he be a holy Hindu Yogi, a Mussulman Sâdhu, Fakir, or
yet a juggling Jaddugar (sorcerer).

In this connection I mean to
present numerous examples of what I here say; for whether we read of the
seemingly supernatural feats produced by the Rishis, the Aryan patriarchs of
archaic antiquity, or by Achâryas of the Paurânic days, or hear of them from
popular traditions, or again see them repeated in our modern times, we always
find such phenomena to be of the most varied character. Besides covering the
whole range of those known to us through modern mediumistic agency, as well as
repeating the mediæval pranks of the nuns of London and other historical
possedees in cases of bhut obsession, we often recognize

215————————————————————ECHOES FROM INDIA.

in them the exact
counterparts—as once upon a time they must have been the originals—of biblical
miracles. With the exception of two—those over which the world of
piety goes most into raptures while glorifying the Lord, and the world of
scepticism grins most sardonically—to wit, the anti-heliocentric crime
performed by Joshua, and Jonah’s unpleasant excursion into the slimy cavern of
the whale’s belly—we have to record as occasionally taking place in India,
nearly every one of the feats which are said to have so distinguished Moses and
other “friends of God.”

But alas for those venerable
jugglers of Judæa! And alas for those pious souls who have hitherto exalted these
alleged prophets of the forthcoming Christ to such a towering eminence! The
idols have just been all but knocked off their pedestals by the parricidal hands
of the forty divines of the Anglican Church, who now are known to have sorely
disparaged the Jewish Scriptures. The despairing cry raised by the reviewer of
the just issued Commentary on the “Holy” Bible, in the most extreme organ of
orthodoxy (the London Quarterly Review for April, 1879), is only matched by his
meek submission to the inevitable. The fact I am alluding to is one already
known to you, for I speak of the decision and final conclusive opinions upon the
worth of the Bible by the conclave of learned bishops who have been engaged for
the last dozen years on a thorough revision of the Old Testament. The results of
this labour of love may he summarized thus:

1. The shrinkage of the Mosaic
and other “miracles” into mere natural phenomena. (See decisions of Canon Cook,
the Queen’s Chaplain, and Bishop Harold Browne.)

2. The rejection of most of the
alleged prophecies of Christ as such; the said prophecies now turning out to
have related simply to contemporaneous events in Jewish national history.

3. Resolutions to place no more
the Old Testament on the same eminence as the Gospels, as it would inevitably
lead to the disparagement of the new one.

4. The sad confession that the
Mosaic Books do not contain one word about a future life and the just complaint
that:

Moses under divine direction [?] should have abstained
from any recognition of man’s destiny beyond the grave,
while the belief was prominent in all the religions around Israel.

This is:

confessed to be one of those
enigmas which are the trial of our faith.

216————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

And it is the “trial” of our
American missionaries here also. Educated natives all read the English papers
and magazines, and it now becomes harder than ever to convince these “heathen”
matriculates of the ‘‘sublime truths” of Christianity. But this by way of a
small parenthesis; for I mention these newly evolved facts only as having an
important bearing upon Spiritualism in general, and its phenomena especially.
Spiritualists have always taken such pains to identify their manifestations with
the Bible miracles, that such a decision, coming from witnesses certainly more
prejudiced in favour of than opposed to “miracles” and divine supernal
phenomena, is rather a new and unexpected difficulty in our way. Let us hope
that in view of these new religious developments, our esteemed friend Dr.
Peebles, before committing himself too far to the establishment of “independent
Christian churches,” will wait for further ecclesiastical verdicts, and see how
the iconoclastic verdicts, and how the iconoclastic English divines will
overhaul the phenomena of the New Testament. Maybe, if their consistency does
not evaporate, they will have to attribute all the miracles worked by Jesus also
to “natural phenomena”! Very happily for Spiritualists, and for Theosophists
likewise, the phenomena of the nineteenth century cannot be as easily disposed
of as those of the Bible. We have had to take the latter for nearly two thousand
years on mere blind faith, though but too often they transcended every possible
law of nature; while quite the reverse is our own case, and we can offer facts.

But to return. If
manifestations of an Occult nature of the most various character may be said to
abound in India, on the other hand, the frequent statements of Dr. Peebles to
the effect that this country is full of native Spiritualists, are—how shall I
say it?—a little too hasty and exaggerated. Disputing this point in the London
Spiritualist of Jan. 8th, 1878, with a Madras gentleman, now residing in New
York, he maintained his position in the following words:

I have met not only Sinhalese
and Chinese Spiritualists, but hundreds of Hindu Spiritualists, gifted with the
powers of conscious mediumship. And yet Mr. W. L. D. O’Grady, of New York,
informs the readers of The Spiritualist (see issue Nov. 23rd) that there are
No
Hindu Spiritualists. These are ins words: “No Hindu is a Spiritualist.”

And as an offset to this
assertion, Dr. Peebles quotes from the letter of an esteemed Hindu gentleman,
Mr. Peary Chand Mittra, of Calcutta, a few words to the effect that he blesses
God that his “inner vision is being more and more developed” and that he talks
“with spirits.” We

217————————————————————ECHOES FROM INDIA.

all know that Mr. Mittra is a
Spiritualist, but what does it prove? Would Dr. Peebles be justified in stating
that because H. P. Blavatsky and half a dozen other Russians have become
Buddhists and Vedântists, Russia is full of Buddhists and Vedântists? There may
be in India a few Spiritualists among the educated reading classes, scattered
far and wide over the country, but I seriously doubt whether our esteemed
opponent could easily find a dozen of such among this population numbering
240,000,000. There are solitary exceptions, which only go to strengthen a rule,
as everyone knows.

Owing to the rapid spread of
spiritualistic doctrines the world over, and to my having left India several
years before, at the time I was in America I abstained from contradicting in
print the great spiritualistic “pilgrim” and philosopher, surprising as such
statements seemed to me, who thought myself pretty well acquainted with this
country. India, unprogressive as it is, I thought might have changed, and I was
not sure of my facts. But now that I have returned for the fourth time to this
country, and have had over five months’ residence in it, after a careful
investigation into the phenomena and especially into the opinions held by the
people on this subject, and seven weeks of travelling all over the country,
mainly for the purpose of seeing and investigating every kind of manifestations,
I must be allowed to know what I am talking about, as I speak by the book. Mr.
O’Grady was right. No “Hindu is a Spiritualist” in the sense we all understand
the term. And I am now ready to prove, if need be, by dozens of letters from the
most trustworthy natives who are educated by Brâhmans, and know the religious
and superstitious views of their countrymen better than any one of us, that
whatever else Hindus may be termed it is not Spiritualists. “What constitutes a
Spiritualist?” very pertinently enquires, in a London spiritual organ, a
correspondent with “a passion for definition” (see Spiritualist, June 13th 1879).
He asks:

Is Mr. Crookes a Spiritualist,
who, like my humble self, does not believe in spirits of the dead as agents in
the phenomena?

He then brings forward several
definitions, From the most latitudinarian to the most restricted definitions.

Let us see to which of these
‘‘definitions’’ the ‘‘Spiritualism’’ of the Hindus—I will not say of the mass,
but even of a majority—would answer. Since Mr. Peebles—during his two short
visits to India and while on his way from Madras, crossing the continent in its
diameter from Calcutta to Bombay—could meet ‘‘ hundreds of Spiritualists,”

218————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

then these must indeed form, if
not the majority, at least a considerable percentage of the 240,000,000 of
India. I will now quote the definitions from the letter of the enquirer who
signs himself “A Spiritualist” (?), and add my own remarks thereupon

A—Everyone is a Spiritualist
who believes in the immortalitv of the soul.

I guess not; otherwise the
whole of Christian Europe and America would be Spiritualists ; nor does this
definition A answer to the religious views of the Hindus of any sect, for
while the ignorant masses believe in and aspire to Moksha, i.e., literal
absorption of the spirit of man in that of Brahman, or loss of individual
immortality, as means of avoiding the punishment and horrors of transmigration,
the Philosophers, Adepts, and learned Yogis, such as our venerated master, Svami Dyanand Sarasvati,
the great Hindu reformer, Sanskrit scholar, and
supreme chief of the Vaidic Section of the Eastern division of the Theosophical
Society, explain the future state of man’s Spirit, its progress and evolution,
in terms diametrically opposite to the views of the Spiritualists.
These views, if agreeable, I will give in some future letter.

B.—Anyone who believes that the
continued conscious existence of deceased persons has been demonstrated by
communication is a Spiritualist.

A Hindu whether an erudite
scholar and Philosopher or an ignorant idolater, does not believe in ‘‘continued
conscious existence,’’ though the former assigns for the holy, sinless soul,
which has reached Svarga (heaven) and Moksha, a period of many millions and
quadrillions of years, extending from one Pralaya* to the next. The Hindu
believes in cyclic transmigration of the soul, during which there must be
periods when the soul loses its recollections as well as the consciousness of
its individuality; since, if it were otherwise, every person would distinctly
remember all his previous existences, which is not the case. Hindu
Philosophers are likewise consistent with logic. They at least will not allow an
endless eternity of either reward or punishment for a few dozens of years of
earthly life, whether this life be wholly blameless or yet wholly sinful.

C.—Anyone is a
Spiritualist
who believes in airy of the alleged objective phenomena, whatever theory he
may favour about them, or even if he have none at all.—————

* For the
meaning of the word Pralaya see vol. ii. of Isis Unveiled. I am happy to say that not withstanding
the satirical criticisms upon its Vaidic and Buddhistic portions by some
American would—be’’ Orientalists, Svami Dyanand and the Rev. Sumangala of
Ceylon, respectively the representatives of Vaidic and Buddhistic scholarship
and literature in India—the first the best Sanskrit, and the other the most
eminent Pali scholar—both expressed their entire satisfaction with the
correctness of my esoteric explanations of their respective religions. Isis
Unveiled is now being translated into Marathi and Hindi in India, and into
Pâli in Ceylon.

219————————————————————ECHOES FROM INDIA.

Such are “phenomenalists,” not
Spiritualists, and in this sense the definition answers to Hindu beliefs. All
of them, even those who, aping the modern school of Atheism, declare themselves
Materialists, are yet phenomenalists in their hearts, if one only sounds them.

D and E.—Does not allow of
Spiritualism without spirits, but the spirits need not be human.

At this rate Theosophists and
Occultists generally may also be called Spiritualists, though the latter regard
them as enemies; and in this sense only all Hindus are Spiritualists, though
their ideas about human Spirits are diametrically opposed to those of the
“Spiritualists.” They regard bhuts are the Spirits of those who died with
unsatisfied desires, and who on account of their sins and earthly attractions,
are earth-bound and kept back from Svarga (the “Elementaries” of the
Theosophists)—as having become wicked devils, liable to be annihilated any day
under the potent curses of much-sought-for and appreciated mediums.* The Hindu
regards as the greatest curse a person can be afflicted with, possession and
obsession by a bhut and the most loving couples often part if the wife is
attacked by the bhut of a relative, who, it seems, seldom or never attacks any
but women.

F.—Considers that no one has a
right to call himself a Spiritualist who has any new-fangled notions about ‘‘Elementaries,’’
spirit of the medium, and so forth; or does not believe that departed human
spirits, high and low, account for all the phenomena of every description.

This one is the most proper and
correct of all the above given “definitions,” ‘from the standpoint of orthodox
Spiritualism, and settles our dispute with Dr. Peebles. No Hindu were it even
possible to bring him to regard bhuts as low, suffering Spirits on their way to
progress and final pardon (?), could, even if he would, account for all the
phenomena on this true spiritualistic theory. His religious and philosophical
traditions are all opposed to such a limited idea. A Hindu is, first of all, a
born metaphysician and logician. If he believes at all, and in whatever he
believes, he will admit of no special laws called into existence for men of this
planet alone, but will apply these laws throughout the universe; for he is a
Pantheist before being anything else, and notwithstanding his possible adherence
to some special sect. Thus Mr. Peebles has well defined the situation himself,
in the following happy paradox, in his Spiritualist letter above quoted, and in
which he says:—————

[Evidently the word “medium” is here
used for “exorcist.’’—EDS.]

220————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Some of the best mediums that
it has been my good fortune to know, I met in Ceylon and India. And these were
not mediums; for, indeed, they held converse with the Pays and Pesatsays, having
their habitations in the air, the water, the fire, in rocks and trees, in the
clouds, the rain, the dew, in mines and caverns!

Thus these
“mediums” who were not mediums, were no more Spiritualists than they were mediums, and—the house
(Dr. Peebles’ house) is divided against itself and must fall. So far we agree,
and I will now proceed further on with my proofs.

As I
mentioned before, Colonel
Olcott and myself, accompanied by a Hindu gentleman, Mr. Mulji-Taker-Sing, a
member of our Council, started on our seven weeks’ journey early in April. Our
object was twofold: (1) to pay a visit to and remain for some time with our
ally and teacher, Svami Dyanand, with whom we had corresponded so long from
America, and thus consolidate the alliance of our Society with the Arya Samajes
of India (of which there are now over fifty); and (2) to see as much of the
phenomena as we possibly could; and, through the help of our Svami—a Yogi
himself and an Initiate into the mysteries of the Vidya (or Secret Science)—to
settle certain vexed questions as to the agencies and powers at work, at first
hand. Certainly no one could find a better opportunity to do so than we had.
There we were, on friendly relations of master and pupils with Pandit Dyanand,
the most learned man in India, a Brâhman of high caste, and one who had for
seven long years undergone the usual and dreary probations of Yogism in a
mountainous and wild region, in solitude, in a state of complete nudity and
constant battle with elements and wild beasts—the battle of the divine human
Spirit and the imperial will of man against gross blind matter in the shape of
tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses and bears, without noting venomous snakes and
scorpions. The inhabitants of the village nearest to that mountain are there to
certify that sometimes for weeks no one would venture to take a little food—a
handful of rice—to our Svami; and yet, whenever they came, they always found him
in the same posture and on the same spot—an open, sandy hillock, surrounded by
thick jungle full of beasts of prey—and apparently as well without food and
water for whole weeks, as if he were made of stone instead of human flesh and
bones.* He has explained to us this mysterious secret which enables man to suffer
and—————
* Yogis and ascetics are not the
only examples of such protracted fastings; for if those call be doubted, and
sometimes utterly rejected by sceptical Science as void of any conclusive
proof—for the phenomenon takes place in remote and inaccessible places—we have
many of the Jains, inhabitants of populated towns, to bring forward as
exemplars of the same. Many of them fast, abstaining even from one drop of
water, for forty days at a time—and survive always.

221————————————————————ECHOES FROM INDIA.

conquer at last the most cruel
privations, which permits him to go without food or drink for days and weeks; to
become utterly insensible to the extremes of either heat or cold; and finally,
to live for days out side instead of within his body

During this voyage we visited
the very cradle of Indian Mysticism, the hot-bed of ascetics, where the
remembrance of the wondrous phenomena performed by the Rishis of old is now as
fresh as it ever was during those days when the School of Patanjali—the reputed
founder of Yogism—was filled, and where his Yog-Sânkhya is still studied with
as much fervour, if not with the same powers of comprehension. To Upper India
and the North-Western Provinces we went; to Allahabad and Cawnpore, with the
shores of their sacred Ganga (Ganges) all studded with devotees; whither the
latter, when disgusted with life, proceed to pass the remainder of their clays
in meditation and seclusion, and become Sannyâsis, Gossains, Sadhus. Thence to
Agra, with its Taj Mâhal, “the poem in marble,” as Bishop Heber happily called
it, and the tomb of its founder, the great Emperor Adept, Akbar, at Secundra; to
Agra, with its temples crowded with Shakti-worshippers, and to that spot, famous
in the history of Indian Occultism, where the Jumna mixes its blue waters with
the patriarchal Ganges, and which is chosen by the Shâktas (worshippers of the
female power) for the performance of their pujâs. during winch ceremonies the
famous black crystals or mirrors mentioned by P. B. Randolph are fabricated by
the hands of young virgins. From there, again, to Saharampore and Meerut, the
birthplace of the mutiny of 1857. During our sojourn at the former town, it
happened to be the central railway point to which, on their return from the
Hardwâr pilgrimage, flocked nearly twenty-five thousand Sannyâsis and Gossains,
to numbers of whom Col. Olcott put close interrogatories, and with whom he conversed for hours. Then to Râjputana, the land inhabited by the bravest of all
races in India, as well as the most mystically inclined—the Solar Race, whose
Râjahs trace descent from the sun itself. We penetrated as far as Jeypore, the
Paris, and at the same time the Rome of the Râjput land. We searched through
plains and mountains, and all along the sacred groves covered with pagodas and
devotees, among whom we found some very holy men, endowed with genuine wondrous
powers, but the majority were unmitigated frauds. And we got into the favour of
more than one Brâhman, guardian and keeper of his God’s secrets and the
mysteries of his temple; but got no more evi-

222————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

dence out of these “hereditary
dead beats,” as Col. Olcott graphically dubbed them, than out of the Sannyâsis
and exorcizers of evil spirits, as to the similarity of their views with those
of the Spiritualists. Neither have we ever failed, whenever coming across any
educated Hindu, to pump him as to the ideas and views of his countrymen about
phenomena in general, and Spiritualism especially. And to all our questions, who
it was in the case of holy Yogis, endowed “with miraculouns powers,” that
produced the manifestations, the astonished answer was invariably the same: “He
[ Yogi] himself having become one with Brahm, produces them,” and more than
once our interlocutors got thoroughly disgusted and extremely offended at Col.
Olcott’s irreverent question, whether the bhuts might not have been at work
helping the Thaumaturgist. For nearly two months uninterruptedly our premises at
Bombay—garden, verandahs and halls—were crammed from early morning till late at
night with native visitors of the most various sects, races and religious
opinions, averaging from twenty to a hundred and more a day, coming to see us
with the object of exchanging views upon metaphysical questions, and to discuss
the relative worth of Eastern and Western Philosophies—Occult Sciences and
Mysticism included. During our journey we had to receive our brothers of the
Arya Samâjes, which sent their deputations wherever we went to welcome us, and
wherever there was a Samâj established. Thus we became intimate with the
previous views of hundreds and thousands of the followers of Svami Dyanand,
every one of whom had been converted by him from one idolatrous sect or another.
Many of these were educated men, and as thoroughly versed in Vaidic Philosophy
as in the tenets of the sect from which they had separated. Our chances, then,
of getting acquainted with Hindu views, Philosophies and traditions, were
greater than those of any previous European traveller; nay, greater even than
those of any officials who had resided for years in India, but who, neither
belonging to the Hindu faith nor on such friendly terms with them as ourselves,
were neither trusted by the natives, nor regarded as and called by them
“brothers” as we are.

It is, then, after constant
researches and cross-questioning, extending over a period of several months,
that we have come to the following conclusions, which are those of Mr. O’Grady:
No Hindu is a Spiritualist; and, with the exception of extremely rare instances,
none of them have ever heard of Spiritualism or its movements in Europe,

223————————————————————ECHOES FROM INDIA.

least of all in America—with
which country many of them are as little acquainted as with the North Pole. It
is but now, when Svami Dvanand, in his learned researches, has found out that
America must have been known to the early Aryans—as Arjuna, one of the five
Pândavas, the friend and disciple of Christna, is shown in Paurânic history to
have gone to Pâtâl(a) in search of a wife, and married in that country Ulupi,
the widow daughter of Nâga, the king of Pâtâl(a), an antipodal country answering
perfectly in its description to America, and unknown in those early days to any
but the Aryans—that an interest for this country is being felt among the members
of the Samâjes. But, as we explained the origin, development and doctrines of
the Spiritual Philosophy to our friends, and especially the modus operandi of
the mediums—i.e., the communion of the Spirits of the departed with living men
and women, whose organisms the former use as modes of communication—the horror
of our listeners was unequalled and undisguised in each case. ‘‘Communion with
bhuts! ‘‘ they exclaimed. ‘‘Communion with souls that have become wicked
demons, to whom we are ready to offer sacrifices in food and drink to pacify
them and make them leave us quiet, but who never come but to disturb the peace
of families; whose presence is a pollution! What pleasure or comfort can the
Bellate [White foreigners find in communicating with them?” Thus, I repeat most
emphatically that not only are there, so to say, no Spiritualists in India, as
we understand the term, but I affirm and declare that the very suggestion of our
so-called ‘‘Spirit intercourse’’ is obnoxious to most of them—that is to say, to
the oldest people in the world, people who have known all about the phenomena
for thousands upon thousands of years. Is this fact nothing to us, who have just
begun to see the wonders of medium-ship? Ought we to estimate our cleverness at
so high a figure as to make us refuse to take instruction from these Orientals,
who have seen their holy men—nay, even their Gods and demons and the Spirits of
the elements—performing ‘‘miracles’’ since the remotest antiquity? Have we so
perfected a Philosophy of our own that we can compare it with that of India,
which explains every mystery, and triumphantly demonstrates the nature of every
phenomenon? It would he worth our while, believe me, to ask Hindu help, if it
were but to prove, better than we can now, to the Materialists and sceptical
Science, that, what ever may be the true theory as to the agencies, the
phenomena, whether biblical or Vaidic, Christian or heathen, are in the natural

224————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

order of this world, and have a
first claim to scientific investigation. Let us first prove the existence of the
Sphinx to the profane, and after wards we may try to unriddle its mysteries.
Spiritualists will always have time enough to refute “antiquated doctrines” of
old. Truth is eternal, and however long trampled down will always come out the
brighter in the expiring twilight of superstition. But in one sense we are
perfectly warranted in applying the name of Spiritualists to the Hindu Opposed as
they are to physical phenomena as produced by the bhuts or unsatisfied souls of the
departed, and to the possession by them of mediumistic persons, they still
accept with joy those consoling evidences of the continued interest in
themselves of a departed father or mother. In the subjective phenomena of
dreams, in visions of clairvoyance or trance, brought on by the powers of holy
men, they welcome the Spirits of their beloved ones, and often receive from
them important directions and advice.

If agreeable to your readers I
will devote a series of letters to the phenomena taking place in India,
explaining them as I proceed. I sincerely hope that the old experience of
American Spiritualists, massing in threatening force against iconoclastic
Theosophists and their “superannuated” ideas will not be repeated; for my offer
is perfectly impartial and friendly. It is with no desire to either teach new
doctrines or carry on an unwelcome Hindu propaganda that I make it; but simply
to supply material for comparison and study to the Spiritualists who think.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Bombay, July, 1879.

MISSIONARIES MILITANT

[Probably from the Allahabad
Pioneer;
1880.]

WE have just read the two
dreary columns in The Pioneer of March 15th, “The Theosophists in Council,” by
Mr. T. G. Scott. The Council of the Society having nothing more to say to the
reverend polemic, who, in rejoinder to a brief card, treats the world to two
columns of what Coleridge would call “a juggle of sophistry,” I, myself, would
ask you to favour me with a brief space.

A few points of Mr. Scott’s
most glaring misconceptions (?) about our Society may be noticed. We are said to
have declared, at New York, that the Theosophical Society was hostile to the
“Christian Church”; while at Mayo Hall, Allahabad, our President affirmed that
his Society was not organized to fight “Christianity.” This is assumed to be a
contradiction and a “change of base.” Now if there were enough “Christianity” in
the “Christian Church” to be spoken of the gentleman’s point might be deemed
well taken. But, in my humble opinion, this is not at all the case. Hence—though
not at all hostile to “Christianity,” i.e., the ethics alleged to have been
preached by Jesus of Nazareth—I, in common with many Theosophists, am very much
so to the so-called “Church of Christ.” Collectively, this Church includes
three great rival religions and some hundreds of minor sects, for the most
part bitterly recriminative and mutually far more hostile to each other than we
are to all. To accuse, therefore, the Theosophists—who may dislike the Methodist,
Presbyterian, Jesuit, Baptist, or any other alleged “Christian” sect—of bitter
hatred of “Christianity” in the abstract, is like accusing one of hating light
because he opposes the use of either or all of the man new-fangled inventions
of kerosene lamps, which, under the pretext of preserving the light, injure it!
The Christianity of Jesus, dragged by its numberless sects around the arena of
our century, appears like that car in the Slavonian fable (a version of one by
Æsop) to which were harnessed all manner of creeping,

226————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

swimming, and flying things.
Each of these, following its own instinct, attempted to draw the car after its
own fashion. Result: between the birds, animals,
reptiles and fishes, the unfortunate vehicle was torn into fragments.

The reverend
missionaries are hard to please in this country. When left unnoticed, they complain of the
Theosophists ignoring the brave “six hundred”; and when we do notice them—which,
indeed, happens only under compulsion—they begin abusing us in the most
un-Christian and often, I am sorry to say, ungentlemanly way.

Thus, for instance, we had to
call the strong hand of the law to our help in the case of The Dnyanodaya, a
diminutive and sorry but quite a fighting little missionary weekly of Bombay,
which called our Society names, and had to apologize in print for it. Now comes
The Bengal Magazine of January; its Editor—by the by, a Christian reverend, but
nevertheless very rude Bâbu—is advised to look out and consult the law, before
he charges Colonel Olcott or anyone else with “hocus-pocus tricks’’ again; as
the ‘‘gushing Colonel’’ may prove as little gushing and as active in his case as
he was in that of the abusive little Dnyânodaya. And now Mr. T. G. Scott calls
an article on “Missions in India” (Theosophist, January) a

Bold, but exceedingly
ignorant attempt at making it appear that missions are a failure in India.

Ignorant as we newcomers maybe
about Indian missionary questions, I must remind Mr. Scott that the person whom
he stigmatizes with ignorance is a lady who has passed many years in India and
has had ample opportunities for observation. Most military or civil employees of
experience in India whom I have met take the same view of the matter that she
does. I cannot imagine why Darwin and Tyndall should have been selected by Mr.
Scott, out of the thousands of scientific and educated men now pulling
Christianity to pieces, as “noisy characters”; nor why he should cite, in an
issue created by modern biblical research, Newton, Kepler, Herschell or anyone
else who lived before the recent advances of Science in this direction, and in
days when, to deny not merely Christianity, but some minor dogma of the State
religion was equivalent to self-condemnation to an auto da-fe As for the
Christianity of Max Muller, Dr. Carpenter (a prince among Materialists) and the
late Louis Agassiz, the less said the better. Might not his long string of
high-sounding names have been profitably enlarged by the addition of those of
the late Viscount Amberley and

227———————————————————MISSIONARIES MILITANT.

Lord Queensborough, of the
“Church” of Moncure Conway, in which is preached the great Religion of Humanity
from every “religion” and church?

Science is our guide, and truth
is the spirit that we worship, says the noble Lord
Queensborough in his letter recently published in The Statesman! Mr. Scott
assures his readers that:
Never since the Apostles has it
[Christanity] been so vigorous as now, the tendency is anything else than to infidelity and
atheism.

But Lord Queensborough, in his
letter to “E. C. H.” challenges the latter, and with him the whole world of
Christians in these remarkable words:

Call us atheists and infidels
if you will; . . . and I maintain, and will maintain, that the time has arrived
for us to proclaim ourselves and to claim to be respected, as other religious
bodies are; but as we never shall he, unless we stand forward and openly declare
what our religion is . . . I am only acting as the mouthpiece of thousands,
perhaps millions, with whom I have faith in common.

Churches of our religion
already exist. I will name one in London, always as full as it can hold on Sundays—South Place Chapel, Finsbury, where Mr. Moncure Conway lectures.

Moncure Conway, I will remind
Mr. Scott, instead of the Bible and Christianity preaches every Sunday from The
Sacred Anthology, extracts from the Vedas, the Buddhist Sutras, the Koran, and so on.
Many of his parishioners are fellows of the Theosophical Society. And now it is
my turn to ask, “How does this tally with the utterances of” Mr. Scott, the
missionary? Equally ill-timed was Mr. Scott’s quotation from the New Testament
of the passage:

Jesus said, Other sheep I have,
not of this fold.

For in the very mouth of Jesus
are put also the words:

He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned (Mark xvi. 16).

To this Mr. Scott may, perhaps,
repeat what he says in his two column letter:

The whole question of the
nature and extent of future punishment is a matter of interpretation.

Exactly. So we, Theosophists
and other heathen and “infidels,” who live in a century of free thought and in
a country of religious freedom, avail ourselves of it.

And now all his points being
answered, the reverend gentleman is

228————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

at liberty to ventilate his
ideas and pour his wrath upon the Theosophists wherever he likes. Yet, unless
he can get his satisfaction from following the good example of other
missionaries, and indulge in monologues of abuse, he can reckon but little upon us
to answer him. It takes two for a dialogue; and whether as a Society or as
individuals, we decline any further controversy on the subject with one who
gives so few facts and so many words.

H. P.
BLAVATSKY.

THE HISTORY OF A “BOOK”—————

[From the Allahahad
Pioneer, March
12th, 1880.]

As the indications in the press
all point towards a Russian reign of terror, either before or at the death of
the Czar—most probably the former—a bird’s-eye view of the constitution of
Russian society will enable us to better understand events as they transpire.

Three distinct elements compose
what is now known as the Russian aristocracy. These may be broadly said to
represent the primitive Slavonian, the primitive Tartar, and composite
Russianized immigrants from other countries, and subjects of conquered states,
such as the Baltic provinces. The flower of the haute noblesse, those whose
hereditary descent places them beyond challenge in the very first rank, are the
Rurikovilch, or descendants of the Grand Duke Rurik and [the ruling families of
the aforetime separate principalities of Novgorod, Pskof, etc., which were
welded together into the Muscovite empire. Such are the Princes Bariatinskv,
Dolgorouki, Shonysky (now extinct, we believe), Tscherbatow, Ouroussov,
Viazemsky, etc. Moscow has been the centre of the greater part of this princely
class since the days of Catherine the Great; and though, in most cases, ruined
in fortune, they are yet as proud and exclusive as the blue-blooded French
families of the Quartier St. Germain. The names of some of the highest of these
are virtually unknown outside of the limits of the empire, for, dissatisfied
with the reforms of Peter and Catherine, and unable to make as fine a figure at
the court as those whom they delighted to call parvenus, it has been their
proud boast that they have never served in any subordinate capacity, and have
not been brought in contact with Western Europe and its politics. Living only
upon their remembrances, they have made a class apart and dwell on a sort of
high social table-land, whence they look down upon commoner mortals. Many of the
old families are extinct, and many of those that remain entirely reduced to
genteel poverty.

230————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Rurik, as is well known, was
not a Slav by birth, but a Varyago-Roos, though his nationality, as well as
that of his people who came with him to Russia, is very much questioned unto
this day, having been a matter of scientific dispute for several years between
the two well-known professors of St. Petersburg, Kostornarof and Pogodine— the
latter now dead. Implored by the Slays to come and reign over their country,
Rurik is reported to have been addressed by the delegates in these ominous
words: “Come with us, great prince for vast is our mother land;
but there is little order in it”—words which their descendants might well report
with as much, if not more, propriety now as then. Accepting the invitation,
Rurik came in A.D. 861 to Novgorod, with his two brothers, and laid the
foundation of Russian nationality. The “Rurikovitch,” then, are the descendants
of this prince, his two brothers and his son, Igor, the line running through a
long succession of princes and chiefs of principalities. The reigning house of
Rurik became extinct at the death of Fredor, the son of Ivan the Terrible. After
a period of anarchy, the Romanoffs, a family of petty nobles, came into power.
But, as this was only in 1613, it was not without reason that the Prince P.
Dolgorouki, a modern historian of Catherine II (a book prohibited in Russia),
when smarting under the sense of a personal wrong, taunted the present Emperor
with the remark:

Alexander II must not forget
that it is little more than two centuries since the Romanoffs held the stirrups
of the Princes Dolgorouki.

And this, despite the marriage
of Mary, Princess Dolgorouki, with Michael Romanoff after he became Czar.

The Tartar princely families
descend from the Tartar Khans and Magnates of the “Zolotaya Orda” (Golden Orda)
of Kazan, who so long held Russia in subjection, but who were made tributary by
Ivan III, father of Ivan the Terrible, in 1523-1530. Of the families of this
blood which survive, the Princes Dondoukof, whose head was formerly
Governor-General of Kiew, and more recently served in Bulgaria in a similar
capacity, may be mentioned. These are, more or less, looked down upon by the “Rurikovitch,”
as well as by old Lithuanian and Polish princely families, who hate the Russian
descendants of Rurik, as these hate their Roman Catholic rivals. Then comes in
the third element, the old Livonian and Esthonian Barons and Counts, the
Kourland nobles and freiherrs, who boast of descending from the first Crusaders
and look down upon the Slav aristocracy; and various

231———————————————————THE HISTORY OF A “BOOK.”

foreign families invited into
the country by successive sovereigns, a Western element engrafted upon the
Russian stock. The names of the latter immigrés have been Russianized in some
cases beyond recognition; as, for instance, the English Hamiltons, who have now
become the “Khomoutoff!”

We have not the data which
would enable us to give the numerical strength of either of the above classes;
but an enumeration, made in the year 1842, showed a total of 551,970 noblemen of
hereditary, and 257,346 of personal rank. This comprised all in the empire of
different degrees of noble ranks, including the princely families and the under-stratum of nobility. There is an untitled nobility, the descendants of the old
Boyars of Russia, often prouder of their family record than those who are known
as princes. The Demidoff family, for instance, and the Narishkine, though
frequently offered the ranks of prince and count, have always haughtily rejected
the honour, maintaining that the Czar could make a prince any day, but never a
Demidoff or a Narishkine.

Peter the Great, having
abolished the princely privileges of the Boyars, and made the offices of the
empire accessible to all, created the Tchin, or a caste of municipal employes
and government officials, divided into fourteen classes, the first eight of
which confer hereditary nobility upon the person holding one of them, and the
six latter give but a personal nobility to the incumbent, and do not transmit
gentility to the children. Office does not increase the nobility of incumbents
already noble, but does lift the ignoble into a higher social rank (Tchinovnik,
government employe was for years a term of scorn in the mouths of the nobles).
It is only since Alexander came to the throne that all old edict was done away
with, which deprived of noble rank and reduced to the peasantry any family
which, for three successive generations, had not taken service under the
government. Those were called Odnodvorizi, and among them some of the oldest
families found themselves included in 1845, when the Emperor Nicholas ordered
the examination of the titles of nobles. The nice distinctions among the above
fourteen classes are as puzzling to a foreigner as the relative precedence of
the various buttons of Chinese Mandarins, or the tails of the Pachas.

Besides these conflicting
elements of high and low nobility, the direct descendants of the Boyars of
old—the Slavonian peers in the palmy days of Russia, divided into petty
sovereignties, who chose for

232————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

themselves the prince they
wanted to serve and left him at will, who were vassals, not subjects, had their
own military retinue, and without whose approval no grand-ducal “ukasè” could be
of any avail—and the ennobled Tchinovniks, sons of priests and petty traders,
there are yet to be considered 79,000,000 of other people. These may be divided
into the millions of liberated serfs (22,000,000), of crown peasants
(16,000,000), who inhabit cities, preferring various trades and menial service
to agriculture. The rest comprises (1) the Meshichanis, or petty bourgeois,
one step higher than the peasant; (2) the enormous body of merchants and traders
divided into three guilds; (3). the hereditary citizens, who have nothing to do
with nobility; (4) the black clergy or the monks and nuns; and the secular clergy,
or married priests—a caste apart and hereditary; and (5) the military class.

We will not include in our
classification the 3,000,000 of Mohammedans, the 2,000,000 of Jews, the 250,000
Buddhists, the pagan Izors, the Savakots, and the Karels, who seem perfectly
well satisfied with the Russian rule, thoroughly tolerant to their various
worships.*
These, with the exception of the higher educated Jews and some fanatical Mohammedans, care little as to the hand that rules them. But we will remind the
reader of the fact that there are over one hundred different nations and tribes,
who speak more than forty different languages, and are scattered over an area of
8,331,884 English square miles;† that the population of all Russia, European and
Asiatic, is not above ten to the square mile; that the railroads are very few
and easily controlled, and other means of transport scanty. How far it would be
possible to effect a complete revolution throughout the Russian Empire, may
well be a subject of conjecture. With so little to bind the many nationalities
into one movement, it would seem to a foreigner an undertaking so hopeless as to
discourage even an Internationalist or a Nihilist. Add to this the
unquestionable devotion of the liberated serfs and peasantry to the Czar, in
whom they see alike the benefactor of the oppressed, the vicegerent of God, and
the head of their Church, and the case seems yet more problematical. At the same
time, we must not forget the lessons of history, which has more than once shown
us—————

* By the last statistics, the
Mohammedans have 4,189 mosques and 7,940 mutfis and mulahs in the Empire of Russia
the Buddhists 389 places of worship and 4,400 priests; the Jews 445 synagogues
and 4,935 rabbis, etc.

†According to the calculation
made in 1856 by G. Schweitzer, Director of the Observatory of Moscow.

233———————————————————THE HISTORY OF A “BOOK.”

how the very vastness of an
empire and the lack of a common unity among its subjects have proved at some
supreme crisis the most potent elements of its downfall.

St. Petersburg is, in reality,
the aristocratic Parc aux Cerfs, a place of shameless profligacy and riotous
excesses, with so little that is national in it that its very name is German. It
is the natural port of entry for all the continental vices, as well as for the
loose ideas about morality, religion and social duty, which are becoming so
widely prevalent. The corrupting influence that Paris has upon France, St. Petersburg has upon Russia. An influential Russian magazine,
Rousskeye Rye gave us
only the other day the following picture of St. Petersburg society:

Russian society slumbers, or
rather it feels heavy and somnolent. it lazily nods, only now and then opening
its lifeless eyes, as might one who, after a heavy dinner, forced to sit in an
unnatural position, cannot resist a lethargic drowsiness, and feels that he must either
unbutton his uniform and draw a full breath, or— suffocate. But
the dinner is an official one, and his body pinched in a state uniform too
tight for him. The man is overcome with an irresistible somnolence ; he
feels the blood rushing to his head, his legs tremble and his hand mechanically fumbles the button of the
uniform to get one gasp of breath that would
interrupt the unendurable torture. Such is the present condition of our
society.

But while it is nodding
under
its threatened apoplexy, from a surfeit of indigestible food, those
carnivorous jackals, who are always ready to eat and drink, and can digest
whatever they pick up, do not sleep. The violation of the seventh
commandment, intellectually as well as physically, having debased body, mind
and soul is nestling in the very heart of the public. Adulterers of body, and
of thought, and of knowledge and science, adulterers of labour—reign in our
midst, are creeping out from every side as the representatives of society and
the public, boasting of their brazen hardihood, successful wherever they go,
having flung away’ all shame cast aside every’ concern to at least conceal the
nakedness of their deeds, even from the eyes of those from whom they’ squeeze
all that can be squeezed only from such a fool as—man. Government and
treasury’ pilferers’, embezzlers of public and private properties; blacklegs
and swindlers subsidized by numberless bubble companies, by stock companies and fraudulent enterprises; thimble-riggers and violators of women and
children
whom they’ debauch and ruin; contractors, money-lenders, bribed judges and
venal counsel, bucket-shop keepers and sharpers of all nationalities, ever)’
religion, every social class. This is our modern social force. Like beasts of
prey, hunting in packs, this force, gloating over its quarry, satiating itself,
noisily crunching its restless, tireless jaws, imposing itself upon everyone,
dares to offer itself as the patron of everything”—science ,literature, arts,
and even thought itself. There it is, the kingdom of this world, flesh of
the flesh, blood of the blood, made in the image of the animal from which
the first germ of man evolved.

234————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Such are the social ethics of
our contemporary Russia, on Russian testimony. If so, then it must have reached
that culminating point from which it must either fall into the mire of
dissolution, like old Rome, or gravitate towards regeneration through all the
horrors and chaos of a “Reign of Terror.” The press teems with guarded complaints of “prostration of forces” among its representatives, the chronic signs
of fast-impending social dissolution, and the profound apathy into which the
whole Russian people seem to have fallen. The only beings full of life and
activity, amid this lethargy of satiety, seem to be the omnipresent and
ever-invisible Nihilists. Clearly there must be a change.

From all this social
rottenness, the black fungus of Nihilism has sprung. Its hot-bed has been
preparing for years, by the gradual sapping of moral tone and self-respect and
the debauchery of the higher class, who always give the impulse to those below
them for good or evil. All that lacked was the occasion and the man. Under the
passport system of Nicholas, the chances for becoming polluted by Paris life
were confined to a mere handful of rich nobles, whom the caprice of the Czar
allowed to travel. Even they, the privileged of favour and fortune, had to apply
for permission six months in advance, and pay a thousand roubles for their
passport, with a heavy fine for each day in excess of the time granted, and the
prospect of confiscation of their entire property should their foreign stay
exceed three years. But under Alexander everything was changed; the emancipation
of the serfs was followed by numberless reforms—the unmuzzling of the press,
trial by jury, equalizing the rights of citizenship, free passports, etc. Though
good in themselves, these reforms came with such a rush upon a people
unaccustomed to the least of these privileges, as to throw them into a high
fever. The patient, escaping from his strait-jacket, ran wildly about the
streets. Then came the Polish Revolution of 1863, in which a number of Russian
students participated. Reaction followed and repressive measures were reädopted
one by one; but it was too late. The caged animal had tasted liberty, though
ever so brief, and thence forth could not be docile as before. Where there had
been one Russian traveller to Paris, Vienna and Berlin under the old reign, now
there were thousands and tens of thousands; and just so many more agencies were
at work to import fashionable vice and scientific scepticism. The names of John
Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Buchner, were upon the lip of every beardless boy and
heedless girl at the universities and colleges.

235———————————————————THE HISTORY OF A “BOOK.”

The former were preaching
Nihilism, the latter Women’s Rights and Free Love. The one let their hair grow
like moujiks, and donned the red national shirt and kaflan of the peasantry; the
other clipped their hair short and affected blue spectacles. Trades Unions,
infected with the notions of the International, sprang up like mushrooms; and
demagogues ranted to social clubs upon the conflict between labour and capital.
The cauldron began to seethe. At last the man came.

The history of Nihilism can be
summed up in two words. For their name they are indebted to the great novelist
Tourguenief, who created Bazarof, and stamped the type with the name of
Nihilist. Little did the famous author of Fathers and Sons imagine at that time
into what national degeneration his hero would lead the Russian people
twenty-five years later. Only “Bazarof”—in whom the novelist painted with
satirical fidelity the characteristics of certain “Bohemian” negationists, then
just glimmering on the horizon of student life—had little in common, except the
name and materialistic tendency, with the masked Revolutionists and Terrorists
of today. Shallow, bilious, and nervous, this studiosus medicine is simply an
unquiet spirit of sweeping negation; of that sad, yet scientific scepticism
reigning now supreme in the ranks of the highest intellect; a spirit of
Materialism, sincerely believed in, and as honestly preached; the outcome of
long reflections over the rotten remnants of man and frog in the dissecting
room, where the dead man suggested to his mind no more than the dead frog.
Outside of animal life everything to him is nihil; “a thistle,” growing out of a
lump of mud, is all that man can look forward to after death. And thus this
type—Bazarof—was caught up as their highest ideal by the university students.
The “Sons” began destroying what the “Fathers” had built. . . . And now
Tourguenief is forced to taste of the bitter fruits of the tree of his planting.
Like the creator of Frankenstein, who could not control the mechanical monster
that his ingenuity had constructed out of the putrefactions of the churchyard,
he now finds his “type”—which was from the first hateful and terrible to
him—grown into the ranting spectre of the Nihilist delirium, the red-handed
Socialist. The press, at the initiative of the Moshovskye Vyedomosty—a
centenarian paper—takes up the question and openly accuses the most brilliant
literary talent of Russia, one whose sympathies are, and always have been, on
the side of the “Fathers,” with having been the first to plant the poisonous
weed.

Owing to the peculiar
transitional state of Russian society between

236————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

1850 and 1860, the name was
hailed and adopted, and the Nihilists began springing up at every side. They
captured the national literature, and their new doctrines were fast
disseminated throughout the whole empire. And now Nihilism has grown into a
power—an imperium in imperio: It is no more with Nihilism with which Russia
struggles, but with the terrible consequences of the ideas of 1850. Fathers and
Sons must henceforth occupy a prominent place, not only in literature, as quite
above the ordinary level of authorship, but also as the creator of a new page in
Russian political history, the end of which no man can foretell.

A FRENCH VIEW OF WOMEN’S

RIGHTS

[Probably from the Allahabad
Pioneer.]

WITH a little book entitled Les
Femmes qui Tuent et Les Femmes qui Votent, Alexandre Dumas, fils, has just
entered the arena of social and political reform. The novelist, who began by
picking up his Beatrices and Lauras in the social gutter, the author of La Dame
aux Camelias and La Dame aux Perles, is regarded in France as the finest known
analyst of the female heart. He now comes out in a new light; as a defender of
Woman’s Rights in general, and of those women especially whom English people
generally talk about as little as possible. If this gifted son of a still more
gifted father never sank before to the miry depths of that modern French
realistic school now in such vogue, the school headed by the author of L’Assommoir and
Nana and so fitly nicknamed L’Ecole Ordurialiste it is because he is a born
poet, and follows the paths traced out for him by the Marquis de Sade, rather
than those of Zola. He is too refined to be the rival of writers like those who
call themselves auteurs-naturalisles and romanciers-experimentalistes, who use their
pen as the student in surgery his scalpel, plunging it into the depths of all
the social cancers they can find.

Until now he idealized and
beautified vice. In the work under review, he defends not only its right to
exist under certain conditions, but claims for it a recognized place in the
broad sunlight of social and political life.

His brochure of 216 pages,
which has lately been published in the shape of a letter to J. Claretie, is now
having an immense success. By the end of September, hardly a week after its
appearance, it had already reached its sixth edition. It treats of two great
social difficulties—the question of divorce, and the right of women to
participate in elections. Dumas begins by assuming the defence of the several

238————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

women who have recently played
an important part in murder cases, in which their victims were their husbands
and lovers.

All these women, he says, are
the embodiment of the idea which for some time past has been fermenting in the
world. It is that of the entire disenthralment of the woman from her old
condition of slavery, created for her by the Bible, and enforced by tyrannical
society. All these murders and this public vice, as we as the increasing mental
labour of women, M. Dumas takes to be so many signs of one and the same
aspiration—that of mastering man, getting the best of him, and competing with
him in everything. What men will not give them willingly, women of a certain
class endeavour to obtain by cunning. As a result of such a policy, he says, we
see “those young ladies” acquiring an enormous influence over men in all social
affairs and even in politics. Having amassed large fortunes, when older they
appear as lady-patronesses of girls’ schools and of charitable institutions, and
take a part in provincial administration. Their past is lost sight of; they
succeed in establishing, so to say, an imperium in imperio, where they enforce
their own laws, and manage to have them respected. This state of things is
attributed by Dumas directly to the restriction of Woman’s Rights, to the state
of legal slavery women have been subjected to for centuries, and especially to
the marriage and anti-divorce laws. Answering the favourite objection of those
who oppose divorce on the ground that its establishment would promote too much
freedom in love, the author of Le Demi-Monde bravely pushes forward his last
batteries and throws off the mask.

Why not promote such freedom?
What appears a danger to some, a dishonour and shame to others,

Will become an independent and
recognized profession in life—une carrière à part—a fact, a world of its own,
with which all the other corporations and classes of society will have to
reckon. It will not be long before everyone will have ceased to protest against
its right to an independent and legal existence. Very shortly it will form
itself into an integral, compact body; and the time will come when, between this
world and the others, relations will be established as friendly as between two
equally powerful and recognized empires.

With every year women free
themselves more and more from empty formalism, and M. Dumas hopes there will
never again be a reaction. If a woman is unable to give up the idea of love
altogether, let her prefer unions binding neither party to anything, and let her
be guided in this only by her own free will and honesty. Of course it is rather
to

239——————————————————A FRENCH VIEW OF WOMEN’S
RIGHTS.

review an important current of
feeling in an important community than to discuss au fond the delicate questions
with which M. Dumas deals, that we are taking notice of his book. We may thus
leave the reader to his own reflections on this proposed reform, as also in
reference to most of the points raised.

A certain Hubertine Auclaire,
in France, has lately refused to pay her taxes on the plea that political rights
belonging to man are denied to her as a woman; and Dumas, with this incident as
a text, devotes the last part of this brochure to a defence of Woman’s Rights,
as eloquent, impressive and original as other portions which will less bear
discussion. He writes:

In 1847 political reformers
thought it necessary to lower the electoral franchise and distribute the right
of vote according to capacity.

That is, to limit it to
intelligent men. The government refused, and this led to the Revolution of 1848.
Scared, it gave the people the right of universal suffrage, extending the right
to all, whether capable or incapable, provided the voters were only men. At
present this right holds good, and nothing can abolish it. But women come, in
their turn, and ask: “How about us? We claim the same privileges.”

What [asks Dumas] can be more
natural, reasonable and just? There is no reason why woman should not have equal
rights with man. What difference do you find between the two which warrants your
refusing her such a privilege? None at all. Sex? her sex has no more to do with
it than the sex of man. As to all other dissimilarities between us, they go far
more to her credit than to ours. If one argues that Woman is by nature a weaker
creature than man, and that it is his duty to take care of and defend her, we
will answer that hitherto we have, it seems, so badly defended her that she had
to pick up a revolver and take that defence into her own hands; and to remain
consequent with ourselves we have to enter the verdict of “Not guilty” whenever
she is caught in that act of self-defence.

To the plea that woman is
intellectually weaker than man, and is shown to be so by sacred writings, the
author sets off against the biblical Adam and Eve, Jacolliot’s translation of
the Hindu legend in his Bible dans l’Inde, and contends that it was man,
not woman, who became the first sinner and was turned out of Paradise. If man is
endowed with stronger muscles, woman’s nerves surpass his in capacity for
endurance. The biggest brain ever found—in weight and size—is now proved to have
belonged to a woman. It weighed 2,200 grammes—400 more than that of Cuvier.
But brain has nothing to do with the electoral question. To drop a ballot into
the urn no one is required to have invented powder, or to be able to lift 500
kilogrammes.

240————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Dumas has an answer for every
objection. Are illustrious women exceptions? He cites a brilliant array of great
female names, and contends that the sex in which such exceptions are to be met
has acquired a legal right to take part in the nomination of the village maires
and municipal officers. The sex which claims a Blanche de Castille, an Elizabeth
of England, another of Hungary, a Catherine II and a Maria Theresa, has won
every right.

If so many women were found
good enough to reign and govern nations, they surely must have been fit to vote.
To the remark that women can neither go to war nor defend their country, the
reader is reminded of such names as Joan of Arc, and the three other Joans, of
Flanders, of Blois, and Joan Hachette. It was in memory of the brilliant
defence and salvation of her native town, Beauvais, by the latter Joan, at the
head of all the women of that city, besieged by Charles le Témeraire that Louis XI
decreed that henceforth and for ever the place of honour in all the national and
public processions should belong to women. Had woman no other rights in France,
the fact alone that she was called upon to sacrifice1,800,000 of her sons to
Napoleon the Great, ought to ensure to her every right. The example of Hubertine
Auclaire will be soon followed by every woman in France. Law was ever unjust to
woman; and instead of protecting her, it seeks but to strengthen her chains. In
case of crimes committed, does law ever think of bringing forward as an
extenuating circumstance, her weakness? On the contrary, it always takes
advantage of it. The illegitimate child is given by it the right to find out
who its mother was, but not its father. The husband can go anywhere, do whatever
he pleases, abandon his family, change his citizenship, and even emigrate,
without the consent or even knowledge of his wife.

She can do nothing of the kind.
In case of a suspicion of her faith, he can deprive her of her marriage
portion; and in case of guilt may even kill her. It is his right. Debarred from
the benefits of a divorce, she has to suffer all, and finds no redress. She is
fined, judged, sentenced, imprisoned, put to death, and suffers all the
penalties of law just as much and under the same circumstances as he does, but
no magistrate has ever thought of saying yet:

“Poor weak little creature Let
us forgive her, for she is irresponsible, and so much lower than man

The whole eloquent, if
sometimes rhapsodical plea in favour of women’s suffrage is concluded with the
following suggestions:

241——————————————————A FRENCH VIEW OF WOMEN’S
RIGHTS.

First, the situation will
appear absurd; but gradually people will become accustomed to the idea, and
soon every protest will die out. No doubt at first the idea of woman in this
new role will have to become the subject of bitter criticism and satire. Ladies
will be accused of ordering their hats aa l'urne, their bodices au suffrage universel, and their skirts au
scrutin secret. But what then ? After having
served for a time as an object of amazement, then become a fashion and habit,
the new system will be finally looked upon as a duty. At all events it has now
become a claimed right. A few grandes dames in cities, some wealthy female
landowners in provincial districts, and leaseholders in villages, will set the
example, and it will be soon followed by the rest of the female population.

The book winds up with this
question and answer:

I may, perhaps, be asked by
some pious and disciplined lady, some fervent believer in time idea that
humanity can only he rescued from perdition by codes and gospels, by the Roman
law and Roman Church: ‘‘Pray, tell me, sir, where are we driving to with all
these ideas ?“ “He, madame! ... we go where we were going to from the first, to
that which must be, that is, the inevitable. We move slowly onward, because we
call spare time, having some millions of years yet before us, and because we
have to leave some work to do for those who are following us. For the present we
are occupied in enfranchising women; when this is done we will try to
enfranchise God. And as soon as full harmony will have been established between
these three eternal principles—God, man and woman—our way will appear to us less
dark before us, and we will journey on the quicker.”

Certainly the advocates of
Woman’s Rights in England have never yet approached their subject from this
point of view. Is the new method of attack likely to prove more effective than
the familiar declamation of the British platform, or the earnest prosing of our
own great woman’s champion, John Stuart Mill? This remains to be seen; but
certainly for the most part the English ladies who fight this battle will be
puzzled how to accept an ally whose sympathy is due to principles so frightfully indecorous as those of our present author.

H. P. Blavatsky.

OCCULT PHENOMENA—————

[From the Bombay
Gazette Oct. 29th, 1880.]

IN the issue of the
19th instant
of your worthy contemporary, I find over two columns devoted to the doubtful
glorification, but mostly to the abuse, of my humble individuality. There is a
long confidential letter from Colonel Olcott to an officer of our Society,
obtained surreptitiously by somebody, and marked “private”—a word showing in
itself that the document was never meant for the public eye—and an editorial,
principally filled with cheap abuse, and venomous, though common-place,
suggestions. The latter was to be expected, but I would like information upon
the following points: (1) How did the editor come into possession of a document
stolen from the desk of the President of the Bombay Branch of the Theosophical
Society? and (2) having got it, what right had he to publish it at all, without
first obtaining consent from the writer or addressee—a consent which he could
never have obtained? and (3) how is such an action to be characterized? If the
law affords no redress for a wrong like this I am content, at least, to abide
the verdict of every well-bred man or woman who shall read the letter and
comments thereon. This private letter having been written about, but not by me,
I abandon this special question to be settled between
the offended and the offender, and touch but upon the one which concerns me
directly.

I have lived long enough in
this world of incessant strife, in which the “survival of the fittest” seems to
mean the triumph of the most unprincipled, to have learned that when I have once
allowed my name to appear in the light of a benevolent genius, for the
production of “cups,” “saucers” and “brooches,” I must bear the penalty;
especially when the people are so foolish as to take the word “Magic” either in
its popular superstitious sense—that of the work of the devil—or in that of
jugglery. Therefore and precisely because I am an “elderly lady from Russia via
America,” the latter country of unlimited freedom

243———————————————————OCCULT PHENOMENA

—especially in newspaper
personal abuse—has toughened me to the extent of being indifferent as to the
sneering and jeering of news papers upon questions they do not understand at
all; provided they are witty and remain within the limits of propriety and do no
harm but to myself. Being neither a professional medium nor a professional
anything, and making my experiments in “Occult phenomena” only in the presence
of a few friends—rarely before anyone who is not a member of our Society—I have
a right to claim from the public a little more fairness and politeness than are
usually accorded to paid jugglers and even alleged Thaumaturgists. And if my
friends will insist upon publishing about “Occult phenomena” taking place in
their presence, they should at least preface their narratives with the following
warning: Pukka Theosophy believes in no miracle, whether divine or devilish;
recognizes nothing as supernatural; believes only in facts and Science; studies
the laws of Nature, both Occult and patent; and gives attention particularly to
the former, just because exact Science will have nothing to do with them.

Such laws are those of
Magnetism in all its branches, Mesmerism, Psychology, etc. More than once in the
history of its past has Science been made the victim of its own delusions as to
its professed infallibility; and the time must come when the perfection of
Asiatic Psychology and its knowledge of the forces of the invisible world will
be recognized, as were the circulation of the blood, electricity, and so forth,
after the first sneers and lampoons died away. The “silly attempts to hoodwink
individuals” will then be viewed as honest attempts at proving to this
generation of Spiritualists and believers in past ‘‘miracle—mongers,” that there
is naught miraculous in this world of Matter and Spirit, of visible results and
invisible causes; naught—but the great wickedness of a world of Christians and
Pagans, alike ridiculously superstitious in one direction, that of their
respective religions, and malicious whenever a purely disinterested and philanthropic effort is
made to open their eyes to the truth. I beg leave to further
remark that personally I never bragged of anything I might have done, nor do I
offer any explanation of the phenomena, except to utterly disclaim the
possession of any miraculous or supernatural powers, or the performing of
anything by jugglery—i.e., with the usual help of confederates and machinery.
That’s all. And surely, if there is anything like a sense of justice left in
society, I am amenable to neither statutory nor social laws for gratifying the
interest of members

244————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

of our Society, and the wishes
of my personal friends, by exhibiting to them in privacy various phenomena, in
which I believe far more firmly than any of them, since I know the laws by which
they are produced, and am ready to stand any amount of personal newspaper abuse
when ever these results are told to the public. The “official circles at Simla”
was an incorrect and foolish phrase to use. I never produced anything in the
‘‘official circles’’ ; but I certainly hope to have impressed a few persons
belonging to such “official circles” with the sense that I was neither an
impostor nor a “hood of official personages,” for whom, moreover, so long as I
live up to the law of the country, and respect it (especially considering my
natural democratic feelings, strengthened by my American naturalization), I am
not bound to have any more respect than each of them personally deserves in his
individual capacity. I must add, for the personal gratification of the Editor
of your contemporary, and in the hope that this will soothe his irate feelings,
that of the five eye-witnesses to the “cup” production, three (two of these of
the “official circle”) utterly disbelieve the genuineness of the phenomenon,
though I would be pleased to know how, with all their scepticism, they would be
able to account for it. I do not imitate the indiscretion of the Editor and
mention names, but leave the public to draw such inferences as they please.

I am a private individual, and
no one has a right to call upon me to rise and explain. Therefore, by causing
Colonel Olcott’s stolen letter to be followed by a paragraph entitled “The way
they treat ‘occult phenomena’ in England,” giving an account of the arrest of
Miss Houghton, a medium who obtained money under false pretences, the Editor, by
the implied innuendo which likens my case to hers, became guilty of one more
unprovoked and ungentlemanly insult towards me, who obtain neither money nor
favours of any sort for my ‘‘phenomena,” and lays himself open to very hard
reprisals. The only benefit I have ever derived from my experiments, when made
public, is newspaper abuse and more or less unfavourable comments upon my unfortunate self all over the country. This, unless my convictions were strong indeed, would amount to obtaining Billingsgate and martyrdom under
false pretences, and begging a reputation for insanity. The game would hardly be
worth the candle, I think.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

Amritzur, Oct. 25th 1880.

HINDU WIDOW- MARRAGE—————

[The following is a copy of a
letter received by Dewan Bahadar Ragunath Row from Madame Blavatsky.]

MY DEAR SIR,—I have not made a
study of Hindu law, but I do know something of the principles of Hindu
religions, or rather ethics, and of those of its glorious Founders. I regard the
former as almost the embodiment of justice, and the latter as ideals of
spiritual perfectibility. When then anyone points out to me in the existing
canon any text, line or word that violates one’s sense of perfect justice, I
instinctively know it must be a later perversion of the original Smriti. In my
judgment, the Hindus are now patiently enduring many outrageous wrongs that
were cunningly introduced into the canon, as opportunity offered, by selfish and
unscrupulous priests for their personal benefit, as occurred in the case of
Suttee, the burning of widows. The marriage laws are another example. To marry a
child, without her knowledge or consent to enter the married state, and then to
doom her to the awful, because unnatural, fate of enforced celibacy if the
boy-child to whom she was betrothed should die (and one half of the human race
do die before coming of age), is something actually brutal, devilish. It is the
quintessence of injustice and cruelty, and I would sooner doubt the stars of
heaven than believe that any one of those star-bright human souls called Rishis
had ever consented to such a base and idiotic cruelty. If a female has entered
the marital relation, she should, in my opinion, remain a chaste widow if her
husband should die. But if a betrothed boy—husband of a non-consenting and
irresponsible child-wife should die, or if, upon coming to age, either of them
should be averse from matrimony, and prefer to take tip the religious life, to
devote themselves to charitable occupations, to study, or for other good reasons
wish to remain celibate, then they ought to be allowed to do so. We personally
know of several cases where the males or females are so bent upon becoming
Chelâs that they prefer death

246————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

rather than to enter or
continue in—as the cases severally may be— the married state. My woman’s
instinct always told me that for such there was comfort and protection in the
Hindus law of the Rishis, which was based upon their spiritual perceptions, hence
upon the perfect law of harmony and justice which pervades all nature. And now,
upon reading your excellent pamphlet, I perceive that my instincts had not
deceived me.

HAVING read an article signed
with the above pseudonym in The Philosophic Enquirer of July 1st, in which the
hapless condition of the Hindu widow is so sincerely bewailed, the idea struck
me that it may not be uninteresting to your readers, the opponents as well as
the supporters of child-marriage and widow-marriage, to learn that the sacerdotal caste of India is not a solitary exception in the cruel treatment of those
unfortunates whom fate has deprived of their husbands. Those who look upon the
re-marriage of their bereaved females with horror, as well as those who may yet
be secretly sighing for Suttee, will find worthy sympathizers among the savage
and fierce tribe of the Talkotins of Oregon (America). Says Ross Cox in his
Adventures on the Columbia River:

The ceremonies attending the
dead are very singular and quite peculiar to this tribe. During the nine days
the corpse is laid out the widow of the deceased is obliged to sleep alongside
it from sunset to sunrise; and from this custom there is on relaxation even
during the hottest days of summer [ the ceremony of cremation is being performed,
and the doctor (or ‘‘medicine man “) is trying for the last time his skill upon
the corpse, and using useless incantations to bring hint back to life,] the
widow must lie on the pile, add after the fire is applied to it she cannot stir
until the doctor orders her to be removed, which, however, is never done until
her body is completely covered with blisters.

After being placed on her legs
she is obliged to pass her hands gently through the flames and collect some of
the liquid fat which issues front the corpse, with which she is permitted [?] to
wet her face and body! When the friends of the deceased observe the sinews of
the legs and arms beginning to contract they compel the unfortunate widow to
go again on the pile, and by dint of hard pressing to straighten those members.

If during her husband’s
lifetime she has been known to have omitted administering to him savoury
food, or neglected his clothing, etc., she is now made to suffer severely for
such lapses of duty by his relations, who frequently fling her On

248————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

the funeral pile, from which
she is dragged by her friends, and thus between alternate scorching and cooling
she is dragged backwards and forwards until she falls into a state of
insensibility.

After which she is saved and
allowed to go.

But if the widow was faithful,
respectful and a good wife, then:

After the process of burning
the corpse has terminated, the widow collects the larger bones, which she rolls
up in an envelope of birch bark, and which she is obliged for some years
afterwards to carry on her back. She is now considered and treated as a slave [as
in India]; all the laborious duties of cooking, collecting fuel, etc., devolve
on her. She must obey the orders of all the women and even of the village
children, and the slightest mistake or disobedience subjects her to the
infliction of a heavy punishment. The wretched widow, to avoid this complicated
cruelty, often commits suicide. Should she, however, linger on for three or four
years, the friends of her husband agree to relieve her from her painful
mourning. This is a ceremony of much consequence. . . . Invitations are sent to
the inhabitants of the various friendly villages, and when the feast commences
presents are distributed to each visitor. The object of their meeting is then
explained, and the woman is brought forward, still carrying on her back the
bones of her late husband, which are now removed and placed in a carved box,
which is nailed to a post twelve feet high.

Her conduct as a faithful widow
is next highly eulogized, and the ceremony of her manumission is completed by
one man powdering on her head the down of birds and another pouring on it the
contents of a bladder of oil! She is then at liberty to marry again or lead a
life of single blessedness; but few of them, I believe, wish to encounter the
risk attending a second widowhood.

H. P. B.

“ESOTERIC BUDDHISM” AND ITS

CRITIC—————

[From Light, 1883.]

Bottom.— me play the lion. . . . I
will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. . . . I will make the
Duke say,...” Let him roar, let him roar again.” ... Masters, you ought to
consider with yourselves; to bring in—God shield us!—a lion among ladies, is a
most dreadful thing; for, there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion
living; and we ought to look to it.

Nay, you must name his name,
and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck; and he himself must
speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect:

“Ladies,” or “fair ladies [or
Theosophists] I would wish you,” or “I would request you,” or “I would entreat
you,” not to fear, not to tremble If you think I come hither as a lion, . . .
no, I am no such thing: I am a man . . . and there indeed let him name his
name.—Midsummer Night’s Dream.

IN Light of July 21st in the
“Correspondence,” appears a letter signed “G. W., M.D.” Most transparent
initials these, which “name the name” at once, and show the writer’s face
“through the lion’s neck.” The communication consists of just fifty-eight
paragraphs, containing an equal number of sneering, rancorous, vulgar, personal
flings, the whole distributed over three and a half columns. It pretends to
criticize, while only misquoting and misinterpreting Eastern Esotericism. Its
author would create a laugh at the expense of Mr. Sinnett’s book, and succeeds
in showing us what a harmless creature is the “lion,” “wild-fowl” though he may
be; and where he would make a show of wit, the letter is only—nasty.

I should not address your
public, even in my private capacity, but that the feelings of many hundreds of
my Asiatic brothers have been outraged by this, to them, ribald attack upon what
they hold sacred. For them, and at their instance, I protest. It might be
regarded as beneath contempt had it come from an outsider upon whom rested no
obligation to uphold the dignity of the Theosophical Society; in such case it
would have passed for a clumsy attempt to injure an unpalatable cause: that of
Esoteric Buddhism. But when it is a wide-open secret

250————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

that the letter came from a
member of about five years’ standing, and one who, upon the protogenesis of the
“British Theosophical Society” as the “London Lodge of the Theosophical
Society,” retained membership, the case has quite another aspect. The cutting
insult having been inflicted publicly and without antecedent warning, it appears
necessary to enquire as to the occult motive.

I shall not stop to remark upon
the wild resume which, professedly “a criticism from a European and
arithmetical standpoint,” passed muster with you. Nor shall I lose time over the
harmless flings at “incorrigible Buddhists and other lunatics,” beyond remarking
àpro of “moon” and “dust-bins” that the former seems to have found a good symbol
of herself as a “dust-bin” in the heads of those whose perceptive faculties seem
so dusty as to prevent the entrance of a single ray of Occult light. Briefly
then, since the year 1879 when we came to India, the author of the letter in
question has made attempts to put himself into communication with the
“Brothers.” Besides trying to enter into correspondence with Colonel Olcott’s
Guru, he sent twice, through myself letters addressed to the Mahâtmâs. Being, as
it appears, full of one-sided prejudiced questions, suggesting to Buddhist
Philosophers the immense superiority of his own “Esoteric” Christianity over
the system of the Lord Buddha, which is characterized as fruitful of
selfishness, human blindness, misanthropy and spiritual death, they were
returned by the addressees for our edification and to show us why they would not
notice them. Whoever has read a novelette contributed by this same gentleman to
The Psychological Review and entitled “The Man from the East” will readily infer
what must have been his attitude towards the “Himalayan” and Tibetan Mystics. A
Scotch doctor, the hero, meets at a place in Syria, in an Occult Brother hood, a
Christian convert from this “Himalayan heathen Brotherhood,” who—a Hindu against
his late Adept Masters the self-same libels as are now repeated in the letter
under notice.—————

* The shot at Theosophy being
badly aimed, flew wide of the mark; but still, like Richard III, “G. W., M.D.”
resolved, as it appears, to keep up the gunnery— The mythical hero of the story
would seem to have met at Paris with a certain pseudo-Brâhman, a convert to Roman
Catholicism, who is giving himself out as an ex-Chela—his statements and all
corroborative ones to the contrary notwithstanding; he may have misled, if not
the mythical Scotch doctor, at least the actual “M.D.’’ of London. And, by the
way, our French Fellows may as well know, that unless this pretender ceases his
bogus revelations as to the phenomenal powers of our Mahatmas being “of the
devil” a certain native gentleman who has known this convert of the Jesuits from
childhood, will expose him most fully—H. P. B.

251—————————————————“ESOTERIC BUDDHISM” AND ITS
CRITIC.

If not to fight with foreign
enemies,
Yet to beat down these rebels
here at home.

The three indignant answers
called out by “G. W., M.D.,” having emanated from an English lady and two
genuine English gentlemen, are, in my humble opinion, too dignified and mild for
the present case. So brutal an attack demanded something stronger than well-bred
protests; and at the risk of being taken by “G. W., M.D.” as the reverse of
well-bred, I shall use plain words about this whilom friend, but now traitor—I
hope to show the term is not too harsh. As an ardent Theosophist, the grateful
loyal friend of the author denounced—who deserves and has the
regard of Mahâtmâ Koot-Hoomi—and as the humble pupil of Those to whom I owe my
life and the future of my soul, I shall speak. While I have breath, I shall
never allow to pass unnoticed such ugly manifestations of religious intolerance,
nay, bigotry, and personal rancour resulting from envy, in a member of our
Society.

Before closing, I must notice
one specially glaring fact. Touched evidently to the quick by Mr. Sinnett’s very
proper refusal to let one so inimical see the “Divine Face” (yes, truly Divine,
though not so much so as the original) of the Mahâtmâ, “G. W., M.D.” with a
sneer of equivocal propriety, calls it a mistake. He says:

For just as some second-class
saints have been made by gazing on halfpenny prints of the Mother of God, so who
can say that if my good friend had permitted my sceptical eyes to look on the
Divine face of Koot-Hoomi I might not forthwith have been converted into an
Esoteric Buddhist?

Impossible; an Esoteric
Buddhist never broke his pledged word; and one who upon entering the Society
gave his solemn word of honour, in the presence of witnesses, that he would.

Defend the interests of the
Society and the honour of a brother Theosophist, when unjustly assailed, even
at the peril of my [his] own life,

and then could write such a
letter, would never be accepted in that capacity. One who unjustly assails the
honour of hundreds of his Asiatic brothers, slanders their religion and wounds
their most sacred feelings, may be a very esoteric Christian, but certainly is
a disloyal Theosophist. My perceptions of what constitutes a man of honour may
be very faulty, but I confess that I could not imagine such a one making public
caricatures upon confessedly “private instructions.” (See second column,
paragraph 14 of his letter.) Private instructions of this sort, given at
confidential private meetings of the Society in

252————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

advance of their publication,
are exactly what the entering member’s word of honour’’ pledges him not to
reveal.

The broken faith made thee
prey for worms;
What canst thou
swear by now?

Your correspondent deprecates

At the outset this Oriental
practice of secrecy; [he knows] that secrecy and cunning are ever twin sisters, [and
it appears to him childish and effeminate [to pretend] by secret Words and signs
to enshrine great truths behind a veil, which is only useful as a concealment of
ignorance and nakedness.

Indeed: so he is
not an
“Esoteric Christian” after all, else I have misread the Bible. For what I find
there in various passages, of which I cite but one, shows me that he is as
disloyal to his own Master and Ideal Christ, as he is to Theosophy:

And he said unto them [his own
disciples], Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but
unto them that are without [the ‘‘G.W., M.D.’s’’ of the day] all these things are
done in parables: that seeing they may see and not perceive; and hearing they
may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and
their sins should be forgiven them. ( iv. 11, 12.)

Shall we characterize this also
as “childish and effeminate,” say that the twins sisters ‘‘secrecy and cunning”
lurk behind this veil, and that in this instance, as usual, it was “only useful
as a concealment of ignorance and nakedness”? The grandeur of Esoteric Buddhism
is that it hides what it does from the vulgar, not “lest at any time they should
be converted, and their sins forgiven them,” or as they would say, “cheat their
Karma”—but lest by learning prematurely that which can safely be trusted only to
those who have proved their unselfishness and self—abnegation, even the wicked,
the sinners should be hurt.

And now, may the hope of Bottom
be realized, and some London Duke say to this harmless lion: “Let him roar, let
him roar again.”

H. P.
BLAVATSKY.

Nilgherry Hills, Aug. 23rd,
1883.

MR. A. LILLIE’S DELUSIONS—————

[From Light, 1884.]

I
WRITE to rectify the many
mistakes—if they are, indeed, only “mistakes”—in Mr. Lillie’s last letter that
appeared in Light of August 2nd, in answer to the Observations on his pamphlet
by the President of the London Lodge.

I. This letter, in which the
author of Buddha and Early Buddhism proposed to Consider briefly some of the
notable omissions made in the “Observations,’

begins with two most notable
assertions concerning myself, which are entirely false, and which the author had
not the slightest right to make. He says:

For fourteen years (1860 to
1874) Madame Blavatsky was all avowed Spiritualist, controlled by a spirit
called “John King” ... she attended many seances.

But this would hardly prove
anyone to be a Spiritualist, and, more over, all these assertions are
entirely false. I say the word and under line it, for the facts in them are
distorted, and made to fit a preconceived and very erroneous notion, started
first by the Spiritualists, whose interest it is to advocate “spirits” pure and
simple, and to kill, if they can, which is rather doubtful, belief in the
wisdom, if not in the very existence, of our revered Masters.

Though I do not at all feel
bound to unbosom my private life to Mr. Arthur Lillie, nor do I recognize in him
the right of demanding it, yet out of respect to a few Spiritualists whom I
esteem and honour, I would set them right once for all on the subject. As that
period of my life (1873-1879) in America, with all its spiritual transactions,
will be given very soon in a new book called Madame Blavatsky, published by
friends, and one which I trust will settle, once and for ever, the many wild and
unfounded stories told of me, I will briefly state only the following.

The unwarranted assumption
mentioned above is very loosely based

254————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

on one single document, namely,
Colonel Olcott’s People from the other World. As this book was written partly
before, and partly after, my first acquaintance with Colonel Olcott, and as he
was a Spiritualist, which he has never denied, I am not responsible for his
views of me and my “power” at that time. He wrote what he then thought the whole
truth, honestly and sincerely; and as I had a determined object in view, I did
not seek to disabuse him too rudely of his dreams. It was only after the
formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875, that he learned the whole truth.
I defy anyone, after that period, to find one word from his pen that would
corroborate his early views on the nature of my supposed “mediumship.” But even
then, when writing of me in his book, he states distinctly the following:

Her mediumship is totally
different from that of any other person I ever met, for instead of being
controlled by spirits to do their will, it is she who seems to control them to
do her bidding.

Strange “mediumship,” one that
resembled in no way any that even Colonel Olcott—a Spiritualist of thirty years’
standing—had ever met with! But when Colonel Olcott says in his book (p. 453)
that instead of being controlled by, it is I who control the so-called spirits,
he is yet made to say by Mr. Lillie, who refers the public to Colonel Olcott’s
book, that is I who was controlled! Is this a misstatement and a misquotation, I
ask, or is it not?

Again, it is stated by Mr.
Lillie that I conversed with this “spirit” (John King) during fourteen years,
“constantly in India and else where.” To begin with, I here assert that I had
never heard the name of “John King” before 1873. True it is, I had told Colonel
Olcott and many others that the form of a man, with a dark pale face, black
beard, and white flowing garments and fettah, that some of them had met about
the house and my rooms, was that of a “John King.” I had given him that name
for reasons that will be fully explained very soon, and I laughed heartily at
the easy way the astral body of a living man could be mistaken for, and accepted
as, a spirit. And I had told them that I had known that “John” since 1860; for
it was the form of an Eastern Adept, who has since gone for his final
initiation, passing through and visiting us in his living body on his way, at
Bombay. Whether Messrs. Lillie and Co. believe the statement or not, I care very
little, as Colonel Olcott and other friends know it now to be the true one. I
have known and conversed with many a “John King” in my life—a generic name for
more than one spook—but, thank heaven,

255———————————————————MR. A. LILLIE’S DELUSIONS.

I was never yet “controlled” by
one! My rnedium-ship has been crushed out of me a quarter of a century or more;
and I defy loudly all the “spirits” of the Kâma Loka to approach—let alone to
control me—now. Surely it is Mr. Arthur Lillie who must be “controlled” by some
one to make untruthful statements which can be so easily refuted as this one.

2. Mr. Lillie asks for

Information about the seven
years’ initiation of Madame Blavatsky.

The humble individual of this
name has never heard of such an initiation. With that accuracy in the
explanation of Esoteric terms that so preeminently characterizes the author of
Buddha and Early Buddhism, the word may be intended for ‘‘instruction”? If so,
then I should be quite justified in first asking Mr. Lillie what right he has to
cross-examine me. But since he chooses to take such liberties with my name, I
will tell him plainly that he himself knows nothing, not merely of
initiations and Tibet, but even of exoteric—let alone Esoteric—Buddhism. What
he pretends to know about Lamaism he has picked tip from the hazy information
of travellers, who, having forced them selves into the borderland of Tibet,
pretend on that account to know all that is within the country closed for
centuries to the average traveller. Even Csomo de Koros knew very little of the
real gyelukpas and Esoteric Lamaism, except what he was permitted to know, for
he never went beyond Zanskar and the lamasery of Phagdal—erroneously spelt by
those who pretend to know all about Tibet, Pugdal which is incorrect, just because
there are no meaning-less names in Tibet’, as Mr. Lillie has been taught to say.
And I will tell him also that I have lived at different periods in Little Tibet
as well as in Great Tibet, and that these combined periods form more than seven
years.

Yet I have never stated either
verbally or over my signature that I had passed seven consecutive years in a
convent. What I have said, and repeat now, is that I have stopped in Lamaistic
convents; that I have visited Tzi-gadze, the Teshu Hlumpo territory anti its
neighbour hood, and that I have been further into, and have visited such places
of Tibet as have never been visited by other Europeans, and such as he can
never hope to visit.

Mr. Lillie had no right to
expect more “ample details” in Mr. Finch’s pamphlet. Mr. Finch is an honourable
man, who speaks of the private life of a person only so far as that person
permits him. My friends and those whom I respect and for whose opinion I care,
have ample

256————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

evidence—from my family for
instance—that I have been in Tibet, and this is all I care for. As to—

The
names, perhaps, of three or four ... English [ Anglo-Indian] officials, who would certify

to having seen me when I
passed, I am afraid their vigilance would not be found at the height of their
trustworthiness. Only two years back, as I can prove by numerous witnesses, when
journeying from Chandernagore to Darjeeling, instead of proceeding to it direct,
I left the train half-way, was met by friends with a conveyance, and passed with
them into the territory of Sikkhim where I found my Master and Mahâtmâ Kuthumi. Thence
I went five miles across the old border land of Tibet.

Upon my return, five days
later, to Darjeeling, I received a kind note from the Deputy Commissioner. It
notified me in the politest of terms that, having heard of my intention of going
over to Tibet, the government could not allow me to proceed there before I had
received permission to that effect from Simla, nor could it accept the
responsibility of my safety,

The Râjah of Sikkhim being
very averse to allow travellers on his territory, etc.

This I would call shutting the
stable-door when the steed is stolen. Nor had the very “trustworthy” official
even heard that a month before Mr. Sinnett had kindly procured for me
permission, since I went to Sikkhim but for a few days, and no farther than the
old Tibetan borderland. The question is not whether the Anglo-Indian Government
will or will not grant such permission, but whether the Tibetans will let one
cross their territory. Of the latter, I am sure any day. I invite Mr. Lillie to
try the same. He may at the same time study with profit geography, and ascertain
that there are other routes than those laid down into Tibet, besides via
“English officials.” He tries his best to make me out, in plain words, a liar.
He will find it even more difficult than to disprove that he knows nothing of
either Tibet or Buddhism or our “Byang Tisubs.”

I will surely never lose my
time in showing that his accusations against One, Whom no insult of his can
reach, are perfectly worthless. There are numbers of men quite as intelligent as
he believes himself to be, whose opinion of our Mahâtmâs’ letters is the reverse
of his. He can “suppose” that the authorities by him cited knew more about Tibet
than our Masters; others think they do not; and the thousand

257———————————————————MR. A. LILLIE’S DELUSIONS

and one blunders of his
Buddha and Early Buddhism show us what these authorities are worth when
trusted literally. As to his trying to insinuate that there is no Mahâtmâ Kuthumi at
all, the idea alone is absurd. He will have to dispose, before he does anything
more, of a certain lady in Russia, whose truthfulness and impartiality no one
who knows her would ever presume to question, who received a letter from that
Master so far back as 1870. Perchance a forgery also? As to my having been in
Tibet, at Mahâtmâ Kuthumi's house, I have better proof in store—when I believe it
needed—than Mr. Lillie’s rancorous ingenuity will ever be able to make away
with.

If the teachings of Mr.
Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism are considered atheistic, then I am an atheist too.
And yet I would not deny what I wrote in Isis, as quoted by Mr. Finch. If Mr.
Lillie knows no difference between an anthropomorphic extra-cosmic God, and the
Divine Essence of the Advaitis and other Esotericists, then, I must only lose a
little more of my respect for the R. A. S. in which he claims membership; and
it may justify the more our assertions that there is more knowledge in “Bâbu (?)
Subba Row’s” solitary head than in dozens of the heads of “Orientalists” about
London we know of. The same with regard to the Master’s name. If Mr. Lillie
tells us that “Kuthumi ” is not a Tibetan name, we answer that we never claimed
it to be one. Everyone knows that the Master is a Punjabi, whose family was
settled for years in Cashmere. But if he tells us that an expert at the British
Museum ransacked the Tibetan dictionary for the words “Kut” and “Humi,” “and
found no such words,” then I say: Buy a better dictionary or replace the expert
by a more “expert” one. Let Mr. Lillie try the glossaries of the Moravian
Brothers and their alphabets. I am afraid he is ruining terribly his reputation
as an Orientalist. Indeed, before this controversy is settled he may leave in it
the last shreds of his supposed Oriental learning.

Lest Mr.
Lillie should take my omitting to answer a single one of his very indiscreet
questions as a new pretext for printing some impertinence, I say: I was at Mentana during the
battle in October, 1867, and left Italy in November of the same year for India.
Whether I was sent there, or found myself there by accident, are questions that
pertain to my private life, with which, it appears to me, Mr. Lillie has no
concern. But this is on a par with his other ways of dealing with his opponents.

Mr. Lillie’s other sarcasms
touch me very little, for I know their

258————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

value. I may let them pass
without any further notice. Some persons have an extraordinarily clever way of
avoiding an embarrassing position by trying to place their antagonists in the
same situation. For instance, Mr. Lillie could not answer the criticisms made on
his Buddha and Early Buddhism in The Theosophist, nor has he ever attempted to
do
so. But he applied himself instead to collect every vile rumour and idle gossip
about me, its editor. Why does he not show, to begin with, that his reviewer was
wrong? Why does he not, by contradicting our statements, firmly establish his
own authority as an Orientalist, showing first of all that lie is a genuine
scholar, who knows the subject he is talking about, before he allows himself to
deny and contradict other people’s statements in matters which he knows still
less about? He does nothing of the kind, however—not a word, not a mention of
the scourging criticism that he is unable to relute. Instead of that, one
finds the offended author trying to throw ridicule on his reviewers, probably so
as to lessen the value of what they have to say of his own book. This is clever,
very clever strategy—whether it is equally honourable remains, withal, an open
question.

It might be difficult, after
the conclusions reached by qualified scholars in India concerning his first
book, to secure much attention in The Theosophist for his second, but if
this volume in turn were examined with the care almost undeservedly devoted to
the first, and if it were referred to the authority of such real Oriental
scholars and Sanskritists as Mr. R. T. H. Griffith, for instance, I think it
would be found that the aggregate blundering of the two books put together might
excite even as much amusement as the singular complacency with which the author
betrays himself to the public.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

August 3rd, 1884.

WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?—————

[Vol. I. No.
I, October, 1879.]

THIS question has been so often
asked, and misconception so widely prevails, that the editors of a journal
devoted to an exposition of the world’s Theosophy would be remiss, were its
first number issued with-out coming to a full understanding with their readers.
But our heading involves two further queries: what is the Theosophical Society;
and what are the Theosophists? To each an answer will be given.

According to lexicographers,
the term Theosophia is composed of two Greek words—Theos, “God,” and sophia,
“wisdom.” So far, correct. But the explanations that follow are far from giving
a clear idea of Theosophy. Webster defines it most originally as

A supposed intercourse with God
and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge, by
physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists, or
by the chemical processes of the German fire-philosophers.

This, to say the least, is a
poor and flippant explanation. To attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius
Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional
misrepresentation, or Mr. Webster’s ignorance of the philosophy and motives of
the greatest geniuses of the later Alexandrian School. To impute to those whom
their contemporaries as well as posterity styled “Theodidaktoi,” God- taught, a
purpose to develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by “physical
processes,” is to describe them as materialists. As to the concluding fling at
the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them to fall home among our most eminent
modern men of science, those in whose mouths the Rev. James Martineau places the
following boast: “Matter is all we want; give us atoms alone and we will explain
the universe.”

Vaughan offers a far better,
more philosophical definition. He says:

A Theosophist is one who gives
you a theory of God or the works of God, which has not revelation, but an
inspiration of his own for its basis.

In this view every great
thinker and philosopher, especially every founder of a new religion, school of
philosophy, or sect is necessarily a Theosophist. Hence Theosophy and
Theosophists have existed ever

262———————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

since the first glimmering of
nascent thought made man seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own
independent opinions.

There were Theosophists before
the Christian era, notwithstanding that the Christian writers ascribe the
development of the eclectic Theosophical system to the early part of the third
century of their era. Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating
the dynasty of the Ptolemies; and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant
called Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic and signifying a priest consecrated to
Amun, the God of Wisdom. But history shows it revived by Ammonius Saccas, the
founder of the Neo-Platonic School. He and his disciples called themselves
“Philalethians”—lovers of the truth; while others termed them the ‘‘Analogists,”
on account of their method of interpreting all sacred legends, symbolical myths
and mysteries, by a rule of analogy or correspondence, so that events which had
occurred in the external world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of the human soul. It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to
reconcile all sects, peoples and nations under one common faith—a belief in one Supreme
Eternal, Unknown and Unnamed Power, governing the universe by immutable and
eternal laws. His object was to prove a primitive system of Theosophy, which at
the beginning was essentially alike in all countries; to induce all men to lay
aside their strifes and quarrels, and unite in purpose and thought as the
children of one common mother; to purify the ancient religions, by degrees
corrupted and obscured, from all dross of human element, by uniting and
expounding them upon pure philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic,
Vedantic and Magian, or Zoroastrian, systems were taught in the Eclectic
Theosophical School along with all the philosophies of Greece. Hence also, that
preeminently Buddhistic and Indian feature among the ancient Theosophists of
Alexandria, of due reverence for parents and aged persons; a fraternal affection
for the whole human race; and a compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals.
While seeking to establish a system of moral discipline, which enforced upon
people the duty to live according to the laws of their respective countries, to
exalt their minds by the research and contemplation of the one Absolute Truth;
his chief object, in order, as he believed, to achieve all others, was to
extract from the various religions teachings, as from a many-chorded instrument,
one full and harmonious melody, which would find response in every truth-loving
heart.

263——————————————————WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?

Theosophy is, then, the archaic
Wisdom the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims
to civilization. This “Wisdom” all the old writings show us as an emanation of
the divine Principle; and the clear comprehension of it is typified in such
names as the Indian Budh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Hermes
of Greece; in the appellations, also, of some goddesses—Metis, Neitha, Athena,
the Gnostic Sophia finally the Vedas, from the word “to know.” Under this
designation, all the ancient philosophers of the East and West, the Hierophants
of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryávartta, the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all
knowledge of things occult and essentially divine. The Mercavah of the Hebrew
rabbis, the secular and popular series, were thus designated as only the
vehicle, the outward shell which contained the higher esoteric knowledge. The
Magi of Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and
secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian Hierophants had their
aporrheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mystés became an Epoptes Seer.

The central idea of Eclectic
Theosophy was that of a single Supreme Essence, Unknown and Unknowable, for—”How
could one know the knower?” as enquires the Brihadáranyaka Upanishad Their system was
characterized by three distinct features: the theory of the above named Essence;
the doctrine of the human soul—an emanation from the latter, hence of the same
nature; and its theurgy. It is this last science which has caused the
Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of materialistic science.
Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine powers of man to the
subordination of the blind forces of nature, its votaries were first termed
magicians—a corruption of the word “Magh,” signifying a wise, or learned
man—and then derided. Sceptics of a century ago would have been as wide of the
mark if they had laughed at the idea of a phonograph or telegraph. The ridiculed
and the “infidels” of one generation generally become the wise men and saints of
the next.

As regards the Divine Essence
and the nature of the soul and spirit, modern Theosophy believes now as ancient
Theosophy did. The popular Din of the Aryan nations was identical with the Iao
of the Chaldæans and even with the Jupiter of the less learned and philosophical
among the Romans; and it was just as identical with the Jahve of the
Samaritans, the Tiu or “Tiusco” of the Northmen, the Duw of the Britons, and the
Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute

264————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Essence, the One and
All—whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldæan Kabalistic, or the Aryan
philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same result. The
Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires into darkness and is
itself Darkness for human intellect) was made the basis of all things; and we
can find the idea in all its integrity in the philosophical systems of Leibnitz
and Spinoza. Therefore, whether a Theosophist agrees with the Kabalah which,
speaking of En-Soph propounds the query: “Who, then, can comprehend It, since
It is formless and Non-existent?”; or, remembering that magnificent hymn from
the Rig Veda (book x, hymn 129)—enquires:

Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
Whether his will created or was mute.
He knows it—or perchance even He knows it not;

or, again, accepts the Vedântic
conception of Brahma, who in the Upanishads is represented as “without life,
without mind, pure,” unconscious, for—Brahma is “Absolute Consciousness”; or
even, finally, whether, siding with the Svâbhâvikas of Nepaul, he maintains
that nothing exists but “Svabhâva” (substance or nature) which exists by itself
without any creator; any one of the above conceptions can lead but to pure and
absolute Theosophy—that Theosophy which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and
Spinoza to take up the labours of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate
upon the One Substance, the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine
Wisdom, incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed, by any ancient or modern
religious philosophy, with the exception of Christianity and Mohammedanism.
Every Theosophist, then, holding to a theory of the Deity “which has not
revelation, but an inspiration of his own for its basis,” may accept any of the
above definitions, or belong to any of these religions, and yet remain strictly
within the boundaries of Theosophy. For the latter is belief in the Deity as the
ALL, the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either
comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it,
Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy True
Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing that, from
eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity neither wills nor
creates; but that, from the infinite effulgency everywhere going forth from the
Great Centre, that which produces all visible and invisible things is but a Ray
containing in itself the generative and conceptive power,

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which, in its turn, produces
that which the Greeks called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon—the
archetypal man—and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahmâ, or the Divine
Male. Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis or continued existence, and in
transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes in the soul * which can be
defended and explained on strict philosophical principles, and only by making a
distinction between Paramâtmâ (transcendental, supreme soul) and Jivâtmâ
(animal, or conscious soul) of the Vedântins.

To fully define Theosophy we
must consider it under all its aspects. The interior world has not been hidden
from all by impenetrable darkness. By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia, or God-knowledge, which carried the mind from the world of form
into that of formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled in every age and
every country to perceive things in the interior or invisible world. Hence the “Samadhi,”
or Dhyân Yog Samâdhi, of the Hindu ascetics; the ‘‘ Daimonion—photisma,’’ or
spiritual illumination of the Neo—Platonists; the “sidereal confabulation of
soul,” of the Rosicrucians or fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance
of mystics and of the modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in
nature, though various as to manifestation. The search after man’s diviner
“self,” so often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a
personal God, was the object of every mystic, and belief in its possibility
seems to have been coëval with the genesis of humanity, each people giving it
another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call “Noëtic work” that which the Vogin
and the Shrotriya term Vidyâ.

By reflection, self-knowledge
and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal
truth, goodness and beauty—that is, to the Vision of God— thus is the epopteia,

said the Greeks, and Porphyry
adds:

To unite one’s soul to the
Universal Soul requires but a perfectly’ pure mind. Through self-contemplation,
perfect chastity, and purity of body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive,
in that state, true knowledge and wonderful insight.

And Svami Dayânand Sarasvati,
who has read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough
Vedic scholar, says in his

Veda Bhashya:,—————

* In a series of at-tides
entitled ‘‘The World’s Great Theosophists,’ ‘ we intend showing that from
Pythagoras, who got his wisdom in India, down to our best known modern
philosophers and Theosophists—David Hume, Shelley, and the Spiritists of France
included—many believed end yet believe in metempsychosis, or
reincarnation of the soul, however unelaborated the system of the Spiritists may
be considered.

266————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

To obtain Dikshâ (highest
initiations) and Yoga, one has to practise according to the rules. The soul in
human body can perform the greatest wonders by knowing the Universal Spirit (or
God) and acquainting itself with the properties and qualities (occult) of all
the things in the universe. A human being (a Dikshita or initiate) can thus
acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances.

It is “spirit” that alone
feels, and perceives, and thinks—that acquires knowledge, and reasons and
aspires ... there not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted that the
spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of sense, or can,
perhaps, wholly or partially, quit the body for a time and return to it again
... the spirit ... communicates with spirit easier than with matter.

We can now see how, after
thousands of years have intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists * and our
own highly civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of such an
enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as well as
upon the physical realms of nature, over twenty millions of people to-day
believe, under a different form, in those same spiritual powers, that were
believed in by the Yogins and the Pythagoreans, nearly 3,000 years ago. Thus,
while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving all the problems
of life and death, when he had once obtained the power of acting independently
of his body, through the Atmâ—”self or “soul”; and the old Greeks went in
search of Atme—the Hidden One, or the
God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of the Thesmopnorian mysteries; so
the Spiritualists of to-day believe in the faculty of the spirits, or the souls
of the disembodied persons, to communicate visibly and tangibly with those they
loved on earth. And all these, Aryan Yogins, Greek philosophers, and modern Spiritualists, affirm that possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its
never embodied spirit—the real self—are not separated from either the Universal
Soul or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their
qualities; as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no
limitation. And that when this difference is once removed—according to the
Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary liberation
of the imprisoned soul ; and according to Spiritualists, through mediumship—such
a union between embodied and disembodied spirits becomes possible. Thus was it
that Patanjali’s Yogins, and, following in their steps,—————

* The reality of the Yoga-power
was affirmed by many Greek and Roman writers, who call the Yogins Indian
Gymnosophists; by Strabo, Lucan, Plutarch, Cicero, Pliny, etc.

267———————————————————WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?

Plotinus, Porphyry and other
Neo-Platonists, maintained that in their hours of ecstasy they had been united
to, or rather become as one with, God, several times during the course of their
lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the Universal
Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to be put aside as
entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi, the only controvertible
point, the dark spot on this philosophy of extreme mysticism, was its claim to
include that which is simply ecstatic illumination under the head of sensuous
perception. In the case of the Yogins, who maintained their ability to see
Ishvara “face to face,” this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern
logic of Kapila. As to the similar assumption made for their Greek followers,
for a long array of Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two
claimants to “God seeing” within these last hundred years Böhme and Swedenborg—this pretension would and
should have been philosophically and logically questioned, if a few of our great
men of science who are Spiritualists had had more interest in the
philosophy than in the mere phenomenalism of Spiritualism.

The Alexandrian Theosophists
were divided into neophytes, initiates and masters, or Hierophants; and their
rules were copied from the ancient Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to
Herodotus, brought them from India. Ammonius obliged his disciples under oath
not to divulge his higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly
worthy and initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels and the
demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric Hyponoia, or under-meaning.
Epicurus observes:

The Gods
exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi, the uneducated multitude, suppose
them to be. He is
not an atheist who denies the existence of the Gods whom the multitude worship,
but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the multitude.

In his turn, Aristotle declares
that of the Divine Essence pervading the
whole world of nature, what are styled the Gods are simply the first principles.

Plotinus, the pupil of the
‘‘God-taught” Ammonius, tells us that the secret gnosis or the knowledge of
Theosophy, has three degrees— opinion, science and illumination.

The means or instrument of the
first is sense, or perception; of the second, dialectics; of the third,
intuition. To the last, reason is subordinate; it is absolute knowledge, founded
on the identification of the mind with the object known.

Theosophy is the exact science
of psychology, so to say; it stands in

268————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

relation to natural,
uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge of a Tyndall stands to that of a
school-boy in physics. It develops in man a direct beholding; that which
Schelling denominates “a realization of the identity of subject and object in
the individual”; so that under the influence and knowledge of hyponoia man
thinks divine thoughts, views all things as they really are, and, finally,
“becomes recipient of the Soul of the World,” to use one of the finest
expressions of Emerson. “I, the imperfect, adore my own perfect”—he says in his
superb Essay on The Over Besides this psychological, or soul-state, Theosophy
cultivated every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with
what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or “ceremonial
magic,” so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy,
was discarded by the Theosophists. It is but Jamblichus alone who, transcending
the other eclectics, added to Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant
of the true meaning of the esoteric divine symbols of nature, man is apt to miscalculate the powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and
mentally with the higher, celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the
theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the evil,
dark powers which lurk around humanity—the undying, grim creations of human
crimes and vices—and thus fall from Theurgia (white magic) into goetia (or black
magic, sorcery). Yet, neither white nor black magic are what popular
superstition under stands by the terms. The possibility of “raising a spirit,”
according to the key of Solomon, is the height of superstition and ignorance.
Purity of deed and thought can alone raise us to an intercourse “with the gods,”
and attain for us the goal we desire. Alchemy, believed by so many to have been
a spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the teachings
of the Theosophical school.

It is a noticeable fact that
neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, nor
Ammonius Saccas, committed anything to writing. The reason for it is obvious.
Theosophy is a double-edged weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish.
Like every ancient philosophy, it has its votaries among the moderns; but, until
late in our own days, its disciples were few in number, and of the most various
sects and opinions.

Entirely speculative, and
founding no schools, they have still exercised a silent influence upon
philosophy; and no doubt, when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently
propounded may yet give new directions to human thought,

269———————————————————WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?

remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H.
Mackenzie, IX° ... himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable
work, The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia ( articles “Theosophical Society of New
York” and “Theosophy,” p. 73I ).* ” Since the days of the fire-philosophers, they
had never formed themselves into societies, for, tracked like wild beasts by the
Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist often amounted, hardly a century
ago, to a death-warrant. The statistics show that, during a period of 150 years,
no less than 90,000 men and women were burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft.
In Great Britain only, from AD. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000 persons
were put to death for compact with the “Devil.” It was but late in the present
century—in 1875 some progressed mystics and Spiritualists, unsatisfied with the
theories and explanations of Spiritualism, started by its votaries, and finding
that they were far from covering the whole ground of the wide range of
phenomena, formed at New York, America, an association which is now widely
known as the Theosophical Society. And now, having explained what is Theosophy,
we will, in a separate article, explain what is the nature of our Society, which
is also called the ‘‘Universal Brotherhood of Humanity.”————————————————————————————————————————

ARE they what they claim to
be—students of natural law, of ancient and modern philosophy, and even of exact
science? Are they Deists, Atheists, Socialists, Materialists, or Idealists; or
are they but a schism of modern Spiritualism—mere visionaries? Are they entitled
to any consideration, as capable of discussing philosophy and promoting real
science; or should they be treated with the compassionate toleration which one
gives to “harmless enthusiasts”? The Theosophical Society has been variously
charged with a belief in “miracles” and “miracle working”; with a secret
political object—like the Carbonari; with being spies of an autocratic Czar;
with preaching socialistic and nihilistic doctrines; and, mirabile dietu, with
having a covert understanding with the French Jesuits, to disrupt modern
Spiritualism for a pecuniary consideration! With equal violence they have been
denounced as dreamers, by the American Positivists; as fetish-worshippers, by
some of the New York press; as revivalists of “mouldy superstitions,” by the
Spiritualists ; as infidel emissaries of Satan, by the Christian Church; as the
very types of “gobe-mouche,” by Prof. W. B. Carpenter, F.R.S.; and, finally,
and most absurdly, some Hindu opponents, with a view to lessening their
influence, have flatly charged them with the employment of demons to perform
certain phenomena. Out of all this pother of opinions, one fact stands
conspicuous—the Society, its members, and their views, are deemed of enough
importance to be discussed and denounced: Men slander only those whom they
hate—or fear.

But, if the Society has had its
enemies and traducers, it has also had its friends and advocates. For every word
of censure, there has been a word of praise. Beginning with a party of about a
dozen earnest men and women, a month later its numbers had so increased as to
necessitate the hiring of a public hall for its meetings; within two years it
had working branches in European countries. Still later, it found itself in
alliance with the Indian Arya Samâj, headed by. the

271——————————————————WHAT ARE THE THEOSOPHISTS?

learned Pandit Dayânand
Sarasvati Svâmi, and the Ceylonese Buddhists, under the erudite H. Sumangala,
High Priest of Adam’s Peak and President of the Vidyodaya College, Colombo.

He who would seriously attempt
to fathom the psychological sciences, must come to the sacred land of ancient
Aryâvartta. None is older than she in esoteric wisdom and civilization, however
fallen may be her poor shadow—modern India. Holding this country, as we do, for
the fruitful hot-bed whence proceeded all subsequent philosophical systems, to
this source of all psychology and philosophy a portion of our Society has come
to learn its ancient wisdom and ask for the impartation of its weird secrets.
Philology has made too much progress to require at this late day a demonstration
of this fact of the primogenitive nationality of Aryâvartta. The unproved and
prejudiced hypothesis of modern chronology is not worthy of a moment’s thought,
and it will vanish in time like so many other unproved hypotheses. The line of
philosophical heredity, from Kapila through Epicurus to James Mill; from
Patanjali through Plotinus to Jacob Böhme, can be traced like the course of a
river through a landscape. One of the objects of the Society’s organization was
to examine the too transcendent views of the Spiritualists in regard to the
powers of disembodied spirits; and, having told them what, in our opinion at
least, a portion of their phenomena are not, it will become incumbent upon us
now to show what the are. So apparent is it that it is in the East, and
especially in India, that the key to the alleged “supernatural” phenomena of
the Spiritualists must be sought, that it has recently been conceded in the Allahabad
Pioneer (Aug. 11, 1879), an Anglo-Indian daily journal .which has not
the reputation of saying what it does not mean. Blaming the men of science who,
“intent upon physical discovery, for some generations have been too prone to
neglect super-physical investigation,” it mentions “the new wave of doubt”
(Spiritualism) which has “latterly disturbed this conviction.” To a large number
of persons, including many of high culture and intelligence, it adds, “the
super natural has again asserted itself as a fit subject of enquiry and
research. And there are plausible hypotheses in favour of the idea that among
the ‘sages’ of the East . . there may be found in a higher degree than among the
more modernized inhabitants of the West traces of those personal peculiarities,
whatever they may be, which are required as a Condition precedent to the
occurrence of supernatural phenomena.” And then, unaware that the cause he
pleads is one of the chief aims

272————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

and objects of our Society, the
editorial writer remarks that it is “the only direction in which, it seems to
us, the efforts of the Theosophists in India might possibly be useful. The
leading members of the Theosophical Society in India are known to be very
advanced students of occult phenomena already, and we cannot but hope that their
professions of interest in Oriental philosophy . . . may cover a reserved
intention of carrying out explorations of the kind we indicate.”

While, as observed, one of our
objects, it yet is but one of many; the most important of which is to revive the
work of Ammonius Saccas, and make various nations remember that they are the
children “of one mother.” As to the transcendental side of the ancient
Theosophy, it is also high time that the Theosophical Society should explain.
With how much, then, of this nature-searching, God-seeking science of the
ancient Aryan and Greek mystics, and of the powers of modern spiritual
mediumship, does the Society agree? Our answer is: With it all. But if asked
what it believes in, the reply will be: “As a body— nothing.” The Society, as a
body, has no creed, as creeds are but the shells around spiritual knowledge; and
Theosophy in its fruition is spiritual knowledge itself—the very essence of
philosophical and theistic enquiry. Visible representative of Universal
Theosophy, it can be no more sectarian than a Geographical Society, which represents universal geographical exploration without caring whether the explorers be
of one creed or another. The religion of the Society is an algebraical equation,
in which so long as the sign of equality (=) is not omitted, each member is
allowed to substitute quantities of his own, which better accord with climatic
and other exigencies of his native land, with the idiosyncrasies of his people,
or even with his own. Having no accepted creed, our Society is very ready to
give and take, to learn and teach, by practical experimentation, as opposed to
mere passive and credulous acceptance of enforced dogma. It is willing to accept
every result claimed by any of the foregoing schools or systems, that can be
logically and experimentally demonstrated. Conversely, it can take nothing on
mere faith, no matter by whom the demand may be made.

But when we come to consider
ourselves individually, it is quite another thing. The Society’s members
represent the most varied nationalities and races, and were born and educated in
the most dissimilar creeds and social conditions. Some of them believe in one
thing, others in another. Some incline towards the ancient magic, or

273———————————————————WHAT ARE THE
THEOSOPHISTS?

secret wisdom that was taught
in the sanctuaries, which was the very opposite of supernaturalism or diabolism;
others in modern spiritual ism, or intercourse with the spirits of the dead;
still others in mesmerism or animal magnetism, or only an occult dynamic force
in nature. A certain number have scarcely yet acquired any definite belief, but
are in a state of attentive expectancy; and there are even those who call
themselves materialists, in a certain sense. Of atheists and bigoted sectarians
of any religion, there are none in the Society; for the very fact of a man’s
joining it proves that he is in search of the final truth as to the ultimate
essence of things. If there be such a thing as a speculative atheist, which
philosophers may deny, he would have to reject both cause and effect, whether in
this world of matter, or in that of spirit. There may be members who, like the
poet Shelley, have let their imagination soar from cause to prior cause adinfinitum, as each in its turn became logically transformed into a result
necessitating a prior cause, until they have thinned the Eternal into a mere
mist. But even they are not atheist in the speculative sense, whether they
identify the material forces of the universe with the functions with which the
theists endow their God, or otherwise; for once that they cannot free themselves
from the conception of the abstract ideal of power, cause, necessity, and
effect, they can be considered as atheists only in respect to a personal God,
and not to the Universal Soul of the pantheist. On the other hand the bigoted
sectarian, fenced in, as he is, with a creed upon every paling of which is
written the warning ‘‘No Thorough fare,” can neither come out of ins enclosure
to join the Theosophical Society, nor, if he could, has it room for one whose
very religion for bids examination. The very root idea of the Society is free
and fearless investigation.

As a body, the Theosophical
Society holds that all original thinkers and investigators of the hidden side of
nature, whether materialists— those who find in matter “the promise and potency
of all terrestrial life,” or Spiritualists—that is. those who discover in spirit
the source of all energy and of matter as well—were and are, properly,
Theosophists. For to be one, one need not necessarily recognize the existence of
any special God or Deity. One need but worship the spirit of living nature, and
try to identify oneself with it. To revere that Presence, the invisible Cause,
which is yet ever manifesting itself in its incessant results; the intangible,
omnipotent, and omnipresent Proteus: indivisible in its Essence, and eluding
form, yet appearing under all and every

274————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

form; who is here and there,
and everywhere and nowhere; is ALL, and NOTHING; ubiquitous yet one; the Essence
filling, binding, bound ing, containing everything; contained in all. It will,
we think, be seen now, that whether classed as theists, pantheists or atheists,
such men are near kinsmen to the rest. Be lie what lie may, once that a student
abandons the old and trodden highway of routine, and enters upon the solitary
path of independent thought—Godward—he is a Theosophist; an original thinker, a
seeker after the eternal truth with “an inspiration of his own” to solve the
universal problems.

With every man that is
earnestly searching in his own way after a knowledge of the Divine Principle, of
man’s relations to it, and nature’s manifestations of it, Theosophy is allied.
It is likewise the ally of honest science, as distinguished from much that
passes for exact, physical science, so long as the latter does not poach on the
domains of psychology and metaphysics.

And it is also the ally of
every honest religion—to wit, a religion willing to be judged by the same tests
as it applies to the others. Those books, which contain the most self-evident
truth, are to it inspired (not revealed). But all books it regards, on account
of the human element contained in them, as inferior to the Book of Nature; to
read which and comprehend it correctly, the innate powers of the soul must be
highly developed. Ideal laws can be perceived by the intuitive faculty alone;
they are beyond the domain of argument and dialectics, and no one can understand
or rightly appreciate them through the explanations of another mind, even though
this mind be claiming a direct revelation. And as this Society, which allows the
widest sweep in the realms of the pure ideal, is no less firm in the sphere of
facts, its deference to modern science and its just representatives is sincere.
Despite all their lack of a higher spiritual intuition, the world’s debt to the
representatives of modern physical science is immense; hence, the Society
endorses heartily the noble and indignant protest of that gifted and eloquent
preacher, the Rev. 0. B. Frothingham, against those who try to undervalue the
services of our great naturalists. “Talk of Science as being irreligious,
atheistic,” he exclaimed in a recent lecture, delivered at New York, “Science
is creating a new idea of God. It is due to Science that we have any conception
at all of a living God. If we do not become atheists one of these days under the
maddening effect of Protestantism, it will be due to Science, because it is
disabusing us of hideous illusions that tease and embar-

275——————————————————WHAT ARE THE THEOSOPHISTS?

rass us, and putting us in the
way of knowing how to reason about the things we see....”

And it is also due to the
unremitting labours of such Orientalists as Sir W. Jones, Max Muller, Burnouf,
Colebrooke, Haug, St. Hilaire, and so many others, that the Society, as a body,
feels equal respect and veneration for Vedic, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and other
old religions of the world; and a like brotherly feeling toward its Hindu
Sinhalese, Pârsi, Jain, Hebrew and Christian members as individual students of
“self,” of nature, and of the divine in nature.

Born in the United States of
America, the Society was constituted on the model of its Mother Land. The
latter, omitting the name of God from its constitution lest it should afford a
pretext one day to make a state religion, gives absolute equality to all
religions in its laws. All support and each is in turn protected by the State.
The Society, modelled upon this constitution, may fairly be termed a “Republic
of Conscience.”

We have now, we think, made
clear why our members, as individuals, are free to stay outside or inside any
creed they please, provided they do not pretend that none hut themselves shall
enjoy the privilege of conscience, and try to force their opinions upon the
others. In this respect the rules of the Society are very strict. It tries to
act upon the wisdom of the old Buddhistic axiom, “Honour thine own faith, and do
not slander that of others”; echoed back in our present century, in the
“Declaration of Principles” of the Brahma Samâj, which so nobly states that “no
sect shall be vilified, ridiculed, or hated.” In Section VI of the Revised Rules
of the Theosophical Society, recently adopted in General Council, at Bombay, is
this mandate:

It is not lawful for any
officer of the Parent Society to express, by word or act, any hostility to, or
preference for, any one section (sectarian division, or group within the
Society) more than another. All must be regarded and treated as equally the
objects of the Society’s solicitude and exertions. All have an equal right to
have the essential features of their religious belief laid before the tribunal
of an impartial world.

In their individual capacity,
members may, when attacked, occasionally break this rule, but, nevertheless, as
officers, they are restrained, and the rule is strictly enforced during the
meetings. For above all human sects stands Theosophy in its abstract sense;
Theosophy, which is too wide for any of them to contain, but which easily
contains them.

In conclusion, we may state
that, broader and far more universal in its views than any existing mere
scientific Society, it has plus science

276————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

its belief in every
possibility, and determined will to penetrate into those unknown spiritual
regions which exact science pretends that its votaries have no business to
explore. And, it has one quality more than any religion, in that it makes no
difference between Gentile, Jew, or Christian. It is in this spirit that the
Society has been established upon the footing of a Universal Brotherhood.

Unconcerned about politics, and
all political organizations, the Society cares but little about the outward
human management of the material world. The whole of its aspirations are
directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible worlds. Whether
the physical man be under the rule of an empire or a republic, concerns only the
man of matter. His body may be enslaved; as to his soul, he has the right to
give to his rulers the proud answer of Socrates to his judges. They have no sway
over the inner man.

Such, then, is the Theosophical
Society, and such its principles, its multifarious aims, and its objects. Need
we wonder at the past misconceptions of the general public, and the easy hold
the enemy has been able to find to lower it in the public estimation. The true
student has ever been a recluse, a man of silence and meditation. With the busy
world his habits and tastes are so little in common that, while he is studying,
his enemies and slanderers have undisturbed opportunities. But time cures all,
and lies are but ephemera. Truth alone is eternal.

About a few of the Fellows of
the Society who have made great scientific discoveries, and some others to whom
the psychologist and the biologist are indebted for the new light thrown upon
the darker problems of the inner man, we will speak later on. Our object now was
but to prove to the reader that Theosophy is neither “a new-fangled doctrine,” a
political cabal, nor one of those societies of enthusiasts which are born to-day
but to die to-morrow. That not all of its members can think alike, is proved by
the Society being organized in two great divisions—the Eastern and the
Western—and the latter being divided into numerous sections, according to races
and religious views. One man’s thought, infinitely various as are its
manifestations, is not all-embracing. Denied ubiquity, it must necessarily
speculate but in one direction; and once transcending the boundaries of exact
human knowledge, it has to err and wander, for the ramifications of the one
central and absolute Truth are infinite. Hence, we occasionally find even the
greater philosophers losing themselves in the labyrinths of speculation, thereby
provoking the criticism of posterity. But as

277——————————————————WHAT ARE THE THEOSOPHISTS?

all work for one and the same
object, namely the disenthralment of human thought, the elimination of
superstitions, and the discovery of truth, all are equally welcome. The
attainment of these objects, all agree, can best be secured by convincing the
reason and warming the enthusiasm of the generation of fresh young minds that
are just ripening into maturity, and making ready to take the place of their
prejudiced and conservative fathers. And, as each—the great ones as well as
small—have trodden the royal road to knowledge, we listen to all, and take both
small and great into our fellowship. For no honest searcher comes back
empty-handed, and even he who has enjoyed the least share of popular favour can
lay at least his mite upon the one altar of Truth.

ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDAS—————

[Vol. I. No. 1, October, 1879.]

A
JOURNAL interested like The
Thesophist in the explorations of arch and archaic religions, as well as the
study of the occult in nature, has to be doubly prudent and discreet. To bring
the two conflicting elements—exact science and metaphysics—into direct contact,
might create as great a disturbance as to throw a piece of potassium into a
basin of water. The very fact that we are predestined and pledged to prove that
some of the wisest of Western scholars have been misled by the dead letter of
appearances, and that they are unable to discover the hidden spirit in the
relics of old, places us under the ban from the first. With those sciolists who
are neither broad enough nor sufficiently modest to allow their decisions to be
reviewed, we are necessarily in antagonism. Therefore it is essential that our
position in relation to certain scientific hypotheses, perhaps tentative and
only sanctioned for want of better ones, should be clearly defined at the
outset.

An infinitude of study has been
bestowed by the arch and the Orientalists upon the question of chronology,
especially in regard to comparative theology. So far their affirmations as to
the relative antiquity of the great religions of the pre-Christian era are
little more than plausible hypotheses. How far back the national and religious
Vedic period, so-called, extends, “it is impossible to tell,” confesses Prof.
Max Muller; nevertheless he traces it “to a period anterior to 1000 B.C.,” and
brings us to “1100 or 1200 B.C., as the earliest time when we may suppose the
collection of the Vedic hymns to have been finished.” Nor do any other of our
leading scholars claim to have finally settled the vexed question, especially
delicate as it is in its bearing upon the chronology of the book of Genesis.
Christianity, the direct outflow of Judaism and in most cases the state
religion of their respective countries, has unfortunately stood in their way.
Hence scarcely two scholars agree; and each assigns a different date to the

279———————————————————ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDAS.

Vedas and the Mosaic books,
taking care in every case to give the latter the benefit of the doubt. Even
that leader of the leaders in philological and chronological questions, Prof.
Muller, hardly twenty years ago allowed himself a prudent margin by stating that
it will be difficult to settle “whether the Veda ‘is the oldest of books,’ and
whether some of the portions of the Old Testament may not be traced back to the
same or even an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the Veda.” The Theosophist is,
therefore, quite warranted in either adopting or rejecting as it pleases the
so-called authoritative chronology of science. Do we err, then, in confessing
that we rather incline to accept the chronology of that renowned Vedic scholar, Svâmi Dayânand Sarasvati, who unquestionably knows what
he is talking about,
has the four Vedas by heart, is perfectly familiar with all Sanskrit
literature, has no such scruples as the Western Orientalists in regard to
public feelings, nor desire to humour the superstitious notions of the majority,
nor has any object to gain in suppressing facts. We are only too conscious of
the risk in withholding our adulation from scientific authorities. Yet, with
the common temerity of the heterodox, we must take our course, even though, like
the Tarpeia of old, we be smothered under a heap of shields, a shower of
learned quotations from those “authorities.” We are far from feeling ready to
adopt the absurd chronology of a Berosus or even Syncellus, though in truth
they appear absurd only in the light of our preconceptions. But between the
extreme claims of the Brâhmans and the ridiculously short periods conceded by
our Orientalists for the development and full growth of that gigantic
literature of the ante-Mahabharatan period, there ought to be a just mean.
While Svami Dayânand Sarasvati asserts that: “The Vedas have now ceased to be
objects of study for nearly 5,000 years,” and places the first appearance of the
four Vedas at an immense antiquity; Prof. Muller, assigning for the composition
of even the earliest among the Brâhmanas, the years from about 1000 to 800
B.C., hardly dares, as we have seen, to place the collection and the original
composition of the Sanhitâ, of Rig Vedic hymns, earlier than 1200 to 1500 before
our era! * Whom ought we to believe, and which of the two is the better informed?
Cannot this gap of several thousand years be closed, or would it be equally
difficult for either of the two cited authorities to give data which would be
regarded by science as thoroughly convincing?—————

* Chips from a
German Workshop, Lecture on the Vedas, p.II

280————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

It is as easy to reach a false
conclusion by the modern inductive method as to assume false premises from which
to make deductions. Doubtless Prof. Max Muller has good reasons for arriving at
his chronological conclusions. But so has Dayânand Sarasvati Pandit. The
gradual modifications, development, and growth of the Sanskrit language are
sure guides enough for an expert philologist. But that there is a possibility of
his having been led into error would seem to suggest itself upon considering a
certain argument brought forward by Svâmi Dayânand. Our respected friend and
teacher maintains that both Prof. Muller and Dr. Wilson have been solely guided
in their researches and conclusion by the inaccurate and untrustworthy
commentaries of Sâyana, Mahidara and Uvata; commentaries which differ
diametrically from those of a far earlier period as used by himself in
connection with his great work, the Veda Bháshya. A cry was raised at the
outset of this publication that Svâmi’s commentary is calculated to refute
Sâyana and the English interpreters. Pandit Dayânand very justly remarks:

For this I cannot be blamed; if
Sâyana has erred and the English interpreters have chosen to take him as their
guide, the delusion cannot be long maintained. Truth alone can stand, and
falsehood must fall.*

And if, as he claims, his Veda
Bháshya is entirely founded on the old commentaries of the ante-Mahâbhâratan
period to which the Western scholars have had no access, then, since his were
the surest guides of the two classes, we cannot hesitate to follow him rather
than the best of our European Orientalists.

But, apart from such
primâ
facie evidence, we would respectfully request Prof. Max Muller to solve us a
riddle. Propounded by himself; it has puzzled us for over twenty years, and
pertains as much to simple logic as to the chronology in question. Clear and
undeviating, like the Rhône through the Geneva lake, the idea runs through the
course of his lectures, from the first volume of Chips down to his last discourse. We will try to explain. All who have followed his lectures as
attentively as ourselves will remember that Prof. Max Muller attributes the
wealth of myths, symbols and religious allegories in the Vedic hymns, as in
Grecian mythology, to the early worship of nature by man. To quote his words:

In the hymns of the Veda, we
see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world. . . . He is awakened
from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his eyes cannot
behold, and who seems to grant him the daily—————

*
Answer to the Objections to the
Veda Bhashya.

281——————————————————ANTIQUITY OF THE VEDAS.

pittance of his existence he
calls “his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and Protector.” He gives names
to all the powers of nature, and after he has called the fire “Agni,’’ the
sunlight “Indra,” the storms ‘‘Maruts,” and the dawn “Ushas,” they all seem to
grow naturally into beings like himself, nay, greater than himself.*

This definition of the mental
state of primitive man, in the days of the very infancy of humanity, and when
hardly out of its cradle, is— perfect. The period to which he attributes these
effusions of an infantile mind is the Vedic period, and the time which separates
us from it is, as claimed above, 3,000 years. So much impressed seems the great
philologist with this idea of the mental feebleness of mankind at the time when
these hymns were composed by the most venerable Rishis, that in his Introduction
to the Science of Religion (p. 278) we find the Professor saying:

Do you still
wonder at polytheism or at mythology? Why, they are inevitable. They are, if you
like, a parler enfantin of religion. But the world has its child hood, and when it was
a child it spoke as a child [nota bane, 3,000 years ago], it understood as a child,
it thought as a child the fault rests with us if we insist on taking the language of children for the language of men.......
The language of antiquity is the language of childhood . . .
The parler enfantin in religion is not extinct .
. . as, for instance, the religion of India.

Having read thus far we pause
and think. At the very close of this able explanation we meet with a tremendous
difficulty, the idea of which must have never occurred to the able advocate of
the ancient faiths. To one familiar with the writings and ideas of this Oriental
scholar, it would seem the height of absurdity to suspect him of accepting the
biblical chronology of 6,ooo years since the appearance of the first man upon
earth as the basis of his calculations. And yet the recognition of such
chronology is inevitable if we have to accept Prof. Muller’s reasons at all; for
here we run against a purely arithmetical and mathematical obstacle, a gigantic
miscalculation of proportion.

No one can deny that the growth
and development of mankind— mental as well as physical—must be analogically
measured by the growth and development of man. An anthropologist, if he cares to
go beyond the simple consideration of the relations of man to other members of
the animal kingdom, has to be in a certain way a physiologist as well as an
anatomist; for, as much as ethnology, his is a progressive science, which can be
well treated but by those who are able to follow—————

* Chips from a German
Workshop, vol. i.
p. 68.

282————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

up retrospectively the regular
unfolding of human faculties and powers, assigning to each a certain period of
life. Thus no one would regard a skull in which the wisdom-tooth, so-called,
should be apparent, as the skull of an infant. Now, according to geology, recent
researches, Prof. W. Draper tells us:

Give good reasons to believe
that under low and base grades the existence of man can be traced back into the
tertiary times. In the old glacial drift of Scotland the relics of man are found
along with those of the fossil elephant.

Now, the best calculations, so
far, assign a period of 240,000 years since the beginning of the last glacial
period. Making a proportion between 240,000 years—the least age we can accord to
the human race—and the twenty-four years of a
man’s life, we find that 3,000 years ago, or the period of the composition of
the Vedic hymns, mankind would be just twenty-one, the legal age of majority,
and certainly a period at which man ceases using, if he ever will, the “parler
enfantin,” or childish lisping. But, according to the views of the lecturer, it
follows that man was, 3,000 years ago, at twenty-one, a foolish and
undeveloped—though a very promising—infant, and at twenty-four has become the
brilliant, acute, learned, highly analytical and philosophical man of the
nineteenth century. Or, still keeping our equation in view, in other words, the
Professor might as well say that an individual who was a nursing baby at 12
noon, on a certain day, would at 12.20 p.m. on the same day have become an
adult, speaking high wisdom instead of his ‘‘ parler enfantin

It really seems the duty of the
eminent Sankritist and Lecturer on Comparative Theology to get out of this
dilemma. Either the Rig Veda. hymns were composed but 3,000 years ago, and,
therefore cannot be expressed in the “language of childhood”—man having lived
in the glacial period—but the generation which composed them must have been
composed of adults, presumably as philosophical and scientific in the knowledge
of their day as we are in our own; or we have to ascribe to them an immense
antiquity in order to carry them back to the days of man’s mental infancy. And
in this latter case, Prof. Max Muller will have to withdraw a previous remark,
expressing the doubt

Whether some of the portions
of the Old Testament may not be traced back to the same or even an earlier date
than the oldest hymns of the Vedas.

PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND

RUSSIAN VANDALISM—————

[Vol. I. No.
I, October, 1879.]

Few persons are capable of
appreciating the truly beautiful and æsthetic; fewer still of revering those
monumental relics of bygone ages, which prove that even in the remotest epochs
mankind worshipped a Supreme Power, and people were moved to express their
abstract conceptions in works which should defy the ravages of time. The
Vandals—whether Slavic Wends, or some barbarous nation of Germanic race—came at
all events from the North. A recent occurrence is calculated to make us regret
that Justinian did not destroy them all; for it appears that there are still
left in the North worthy scions of those terrible destroyers of monuments of
arts and sciences, in the persons of certain Russian merchants who have just
perpetrated an act of inexcusable Vandalism. According to the late Russian
papers, the Moscow arch-millionaire, Kokoref, with his Tiflis partner the
Armenian Crœsus Mirzoef is desecrating and about to totally destroy the oldest relic
in the world of Zoroastrianism—
the “Attesh-Gag” of Baku.

Few foreigners, and perhaps as
few Russians, know anything of this venerable sanctuary of the fire-worshippers
beside the Caspian Sea. About twenty versts from the small town of Baku in the
valley of Apsheron in Russian Georgia, and among the barren, desolated steppes
of the shores of the Caspian, there stands—alas! rather stood, but a few months
ago—a strange structure, something between a mediæval cathedral and a fortified
castle. It was built in unknown ages, and by builders as unknown. Over an area
of so more than a square mile, a tract known as the Fiery Field, upon which the
structure stands, if one but digs from two to three inches into the sandy earth,
and applies a lighted match, a jet of fire will stream up, as if from a spout.*
The “Guebre Temple,” as the building is sometimes termed,—————

* A bluish flame is seen to arise
there, but this fire does not consume, “and if a person finds him self in the
middle of it, he is not sensible of any warmth.”—See Kinneir’s Persia, p. 35.

284————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

is carved out of one solid
rock. It is an enormous square enclosed by crenelated walls, and at the centre
of the square, a high tower, also rectangular, resting upon four gigantic
pillars. The latter were pierced vertically down to the bed-rock and the
cavities were continued up to the battlements where they opened out into the
atmosphere; thus forming continuous tubes through which the inflammable gas
stored up in the heart of the mother rock was conducted to the top of the tower.
This tower has been for centuries a shrine of the fire-worshippers, and bears
the symbolical representation of the trident—called tirsut. All around the
interior face of the external wall are excavated the cells, about twenty in
number, which served as habitations for past generations of Zoroastrian
recluses. Under the supervision of a High Mobed, here, in the silence of their
isolated cloisters, they studied the Ayesta, the Vendidad the Yashna—especially the
latter, it seems, as the rocky walls of the cells are inscribed with a greater
number of quotations from the sacred songs. Under the tower-altar three huge
bells were hung. A legend says that they were miraculously produced by a holy
traveller, in the tenth century, during the Mussulman persecution, to warn the
faithful of the approach of the enemy. But a few weeks ago the tall tower-altar
was yet ablaze with the same flame that local tradition affirms had been kindled
thirty centuries ago. At the horizontal orifices in the four hollow pillars
burned four perpetual fires, fed uninterruptedly from the inexhaustible
subterranean reservoir. From every merlon on the walls, as well as from every
embrasure, flashed forth a radiant light, like so many tongues of fire; and
even the large porch overhanging the main entrance was encircled by a garland of
fiery stars, the lambent lights shooting forth from smaller and narrower
orifices. It was amid these impressive surroundings that the Guebre recluses
used to send up their daily prayers, meeting under the open tower-altar; every
face reverentially turned toward the setting sun as they united their voices in
a parting evening hymn. And as the luminary—the “Eye of Ahura-mazda”—sank lower
and lower down the horizon, their voices grew lower and softer, until the chant
sounded like a plaintive and subdued murmur. . . . A last flash— and the sun is
gone; and as darkness follows daylight almost suddenly in these regions, the
departure of the Deity’s symbol was the signal for a general illumination,
unrivalled even by the greatest fireworks at regal festivals. The whole field
seemed nightly like one blazing prairie. .

285—————————————PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND RUSSIAN
VANDALISM

Till about 1840,
Attesh-Gag
was the chief rendezvous for all the fire-worshippers of Persia. Thousands of
pilgrims came and went; for no true Guebre could die happy unless he had
performed the sacred pilgrimage at least once during his lifetime. A traveller—Koch—who visited the cloister about that time, found in it but five
Zoroastrians, with their pupils. In 1878, about fourteen months ago, a lady of Tiflis, who visited the Attesh-Gag, mentioned in a private letter that she found
there but one solitary hermit, who emerges from his cell but to meet the rising
and salute the departing sun. And now, hardly a year later, we find in the
papers that Messrs. Kokoref and Co. are busy erecting on the Fiery Field
enormous buildings for the refining of petroleum! All the cells but the one
occupied by the poor old hermit, half ruined and dirty beyond expression, are
inhabited by the firm’s workmen; the altar over which blazed the sacred flame is
now piled high with rubbish, mortar and mud, and the flame itself turned off in
another direction. The bells are now, during the periodical visits of a Russian
priest, taken down and suspended in the porch of the superintendent’s house;
heathen relics being as usual used—though abused—by the religion which supplants
the previous worship. And all looks like the abomination of desolation It is a
matter of surprise to me,” writes a Baku correspondent in the St. Petersburg
Viedomosti, who was the first to send the unwelcome news, “that the
trident, the sacred tirsut itself, has not as yet been put to some appropriate use
in the new firm’s kitchen it then so absolutely necessary that the millionaire Kokoref should desecrate the Zoroastrian cloister, which occupies such a
trifling compound in comparison to the space allotted to his manufactories and
stores? And shall such a remarkable relic of antiquity be sacrificed to
commercial greediness which can after all neither lose nor gain one single
rouble by destroying it?’’

It must, apparently, since
Messrs. Kokoref and Co. have rented the whole field from the Government, which
seems to feel quite indifferent to this idiotic and useless Vandalism. It is now
more than twenty years since I visited Attesh-Gag for the last time. In those
days besides a small group of recluses, it had the visits of many pilgrims. And
since it is more than likely that ten years hence people will hear no more of
it, I may give a few more details of its history. Our Pârsi friends will, I am
sure, feel an interest in a few legends gathered by me on the spot.

286————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

A veil seems to be drawn over
the origin of Attesh-Gag. Historical data are scarce and contradictory. With the
exception of some old Armenian chronicles which mention it incidentally as
having existed before Christianity was brought into the country by St. Nina
during the third century * there is no mention of it anywhere else, so far as I
know.

Tradition informs us—how far
correctly is not for me to decide— that long before Zarathushtra, the people,
who now are called in contempt by the Mussulmans and Christians “Guebres,” and
who term themselves “Behedin” (followers of the true faith) recognized Mithra,
the Mediator, as their sole and highest God—who included within himself all the
good as well as the bad Gods. Mithra representing the two natures of Ormazd and
Ahriman combined, the people feared him, whereas they would have had no need of
fearing, but only of loving and reverencing him as Ahura-Mazda, were Mithra
without the Ahriman element.—————

* Though St. Nina appeared in
Georgia in the third, it is not before the fifth century that the idolatrous
Gronzines were converted to christianity by the thirteen Syrian Fathers. They
came under the leadership of both St. Antony and St. John of Zedadzene—so
called, because he is alleged to have travelled to the Caucasian regions on
purpose to fight and conquer the chief idol Zeda! And thus while—as
incontrovertible proof of the existence of both—the opulent tresses of the black
hair of St. Nina are preserved to this day as relics, in Zion cathedral at
Tiflis—the thaumaturgic John has immortalized his name still more. Zeda, who
was the Baal of Trans-Caucasus, had children sacrificed to him, as the legend
tells us, on the top of the zedadzene mount, about eighteen versts from Tiflis.
It is there that the saint defied the idol—or rather Satan under the guise of a
stone statue—to single combat, and miraculously conquered him, i.e., threw down
and trampled upon the idol. Dot he did not stop there in the exhibition of his
powers. The mountain peak is of immense height, and being only a barren rock at
its top, spring water is nowhere to be found on its summit. But in
commemoration of his triumph, the saint had a spring appear at the very bottom
of the deep, and—as people assert—fathomless well dug down into the very bowels
of the mountain, and the gaping mouth of which was situated near the altar of
the god Zeda, just in the centre of his temple. It was into this opening that
the limbs of the murdered infants were cast down after the sacrifice. The
miraculously spring, however, was soon dried up, and for many centuries no water
appeared. But when Christianity was firmly established, the water began
reappearing on the seventh day of every May, and continues to do so till the
present time. Strange to say this fact does not pertain to the domain of
legend, but is one that has provoked an intense curiosity even among men of
science, such as the eminent geologist, Dr. Abich, who resided for years at
Tifiis. Thousands upon thousands proceed yearly upon pilgrimage to zedadzene on
the seventh of May, and all witness the “miracle.” From early morning water is
heard bobbling down at the rocky bottom of the well; and, as noon approaches,
the parched-op walls of the month beco moist, and clear, cold, sparkling water
seems to come out from every pore of the rock; it rises higher and higher,
bubbles, increases, until at last having reached the very brim it suddenly
stops, and a prolonged shoot of triumphant Joy bursts from the fanatical crowd.
This cry seems to shake the very depths of the mountain like a sudden discharge
of artillery and awakens the echo for miles around. Everyone hurries to fill a
vessel with the miraculous water. There are necks wrung and heads broken on
that day at zedadzene, not everyone who survives carries home a provision of the
crystal fold. Toward evening the water begins decreasing as mysteriously as it
had appeared, and at midnight the well is again perfectly dry. Not a drop of
water, nor a trace of any spring, could be found by the engineers and geologists
bent upon discovering the “trick.” For a whole year the sanctuary remains
deserted, and there is not even a janitor to watch the poor shrine. The
geologists have declared that the soil of the mountain precludes the
possibility of having springs concealed in it. Who will explain the puzzle?

287—————————————PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND RUSSIAN
VANDALISM.

One day as the God, disguised
as a shepherd, was wandering about the earth, he came to Baku, then a dreary,
deserted sea-shore, and found an old devotee of his quarrelling with his wife.
Upon this barren spot wood was scarce, and she would not give up a certain
portion of her stock of cooking fuel to be burned upon the altar. So the Ahriman
element was aroused in the God, and, striking the stingy old woman, he changed
her into a gigantic rock. Then, the Ahura-Mazda element prevailing, he, to
console the bereaved widower, promised that neither he nor his descendants
should ever need fuel any more, for he would provide such a supply as should
last till the end of time. So he struck the rock again and then struck the
ground for miles around, and the earth and the calcareous soil of the Caspian
shores were filled up to the brim with naphtha. To commemorate the happy event
the old devotee assembled all the youths of the neighbourhood and set himself to
excavating the rock—which was all that remained of his ex-wife. He cut the
battlemented walls, and fashioned the altar and the four pillars, hollowing them
all to allow the gases to rise and escape through the top of the merlons. The
God Mithra upon seeing the work ended, sent a lightning flash, which set the
fire upon the altar ablaze, and lit up every merlon upon the walls. Then, in
order that it should burn the brighter, he called forth the four winds and
ordered them to blow the flame in every direction. To this day Baku is known
under its primitive name of “Baadey-ku-ba which means literally the gathering of winds.

The other legend, which is but
a continuation of the above, runs thus: For countless ages time devotees of
Mithra worshipped at Ins shrines, until Zarathushtra, descending from heaven in
the shape of a “Golden Star,” transformed himself into a man, and began teaching
a new doctrine. He sung the praises of the One but Triple God—the supreme
Eternal, the in comprehensible essence “Zervana-Akarna,” which emanating from
itself ‘‘Primeval Light,’’ the latter in its turn produced Ahura-Mazda. But
this process required that the “Primeval One” should previously absorb in itself
all the light from the fiery Mithra, and thus left the poor God despoiled of all
his brightness. Losing his right of undivided supremacy, Mithra, in despair,
and instigated by his Ahrimanian nature, annihilated himself for the time
being, leaving Ahriman alone, to fight out his quarrel with Ormazd, as best he
could. Hence the prevailing duality in nature since that time until Mithra
returns; for he promised to his faithful devotees to

288————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

come back some day. Only, since
then, a series of calamities fell upon the fire-worshippers. The last of these
was the invasion of their country by the Moslems in the seventh century, when
these fanatics began most cruel persecutions against the Behedin. Driven away
from every quarter, the Guebres found refuge but in the province of Kerman, and
in the city of Yezd. Then followed heresies. Many of the Zoroastrians abandoning
the faith of their forefathers became Moslems; others, in their unquenchable
hatred for the new rulers, joined the ferocious Kurds and became devil-,
as well
as fire-worshippers. These are the Yezids. The whole religion of these strange
sectarians—with the exception of a few
who have more weird rites, which are a secret to all but to themselves—consists
in the following. As soon as the morning sun appears, they place their two
thumbs crosswise one upon the other, kiss the symbol, and touch their brows with
them in reverential silence. Then they salute the sun and turn back into their
tents. They believe in the power of the devil, dread it, and propitiate the
“fallen angel” by every means; getting very angry whenever they hear him spoken
of disrespectfully by either a Mussulman or a Christian. Murders have been
committed by them on account of such irreverent talk, but people have become
more prudent of late.

With the exception of the
Bombay community of Pârsis, fire-worshippers are, then, to be found but in the
two places before mentioned, and scattered around Baku. In Persia some years
ago, according to statistics they numbered about 100,000 men, I doubt, though,
whether their religion has been preserved as pure as even that of the Gujarâti
Pârsis, adulterated as is the latter by the errors and carelessness of
generations of uneducated Mobeds. And yet, as is the case of their Bombay
brethren, who are considered by all the travellers as well as Anglo-Indians, as
the most intelligent, industrious and well-behaved community of the native
races, the fire-worshippers of Kerman and Yezd bear a very high character among
the Persians, as well as among the Russians of Baku. Uncouth and crafty some of
them have become, owing to long centuries of persecution and spoliation; but the
unanimous testimony is in their favour, and they are spoken of as a virtuous,
highly moral, and industrious population. “As good as the word of a Guebre” is a
common saying among the Kurds, who repeat it without being in the least
conscious of the self-condemnation contained in it.

I cannot close without
expressing my astonishment at the utter ignorance as to their religion, which
seems to prevail in Russia even

289——————————————PERSIAN ZOROASTRIANISM AND RUSSIAN
VANDALISM.

among the journalists. One of
them speaks of the Guebres, in the article of the St. Petersburg Viedomosti
above
referred to, as of a sect of Hindu idolaters, in whose prayers the name of
Brahmâ is constantly invoked. To add to the importance of this historical item,
Alexandre Dumas (senior) is quoted, as mentioning in his work, Travels in the
Caucasus, that during his visit to Attesh-Gag, he found in one of the cells of
the Zoroastrian cloister “two Hindu idols”! Without forgetting the charitable
dictum: De mortuis nil nisi bonum, we cannot refrain from reminding the
correspondent of our esteemed contemporary of a fact which no reader of the
novels of the brilliant French writer ought to be ignorant of, namely, that for
the variety and inexhaustible stock of historical facts, evolved out of
the abysmal depths of his own consciousness, even the immortal Baron Münchausen
was hardly his equal. The sensational narrative of his tiger-hunting in
Mingrelia, where, since the days of Noah, there never was a tiger, is yet fresh
in the memory of his readers.

CROSS AND FIRE—————

[Vol. I. No.
2, November, 1879.]

PERHAPS the most widespread and
universal symbols in the old astronomical systems which have passed down the
stream of time to our century, and have left traces everywhere in the Christian
religion as else where, are the Cross and the Fire, the latter the symbol of the
sun. The ancient Aryans used them both as the symbols of Agni. Whenever the
ancient devotee desired to worship Agni—says E. Burnouf (Science des Religions,
ch. x.)—he arranged two pieces of wood in the form of a cross, and by a peculiar
whirling and friction obtained fire for his sacrifice. As a symbol it is called
Svastika, and as an instrument manufactured out of a sacred tree and in
possession of every Brâhman, it is known as Arani.

The Scandinavians had the same
sign and called it Thor’s Hammer, as bearing a mysterious magneto-electric
relation to Thor, the God of Thunder, who, like Jupiter armed with his
thunderbolts, holds in his hand this ensign of power, not only over mortals but
also the mischievous spirits of the elements, over which he presides. In
Masonry it appears in the form of the grand master’s mallet; at Allahabad it may
be seen on the fort as the Jaina Cross, or the talisman of the Jaina kings; and
the gavel of the modern judge is no more than this crux dissimulata, as de Rossi
the arch calls it; for the gavel is the sign of power and strength, as the
hammer represented the might of Thor, who in the Norse legend splits a rock
with it. Dr. Schliemann found it in terra-cotta discs, on the site, as he
believes, of ancient Troy, in the lowest strata of his excavations; which
indicated, according to Dr. Lundy, “an Aryan civilization long anterior to the
Greek—say from two to three thousand years B.C.” Burnouf calls it the oldest
form of the Cross known, and affirms that “it is found personified in the
ancient religion of the Greeks under the figure of Prometheus, the fire-bearer
crucified on Mount Caucasus, while the celestial bird—the

291————————————————————CROSS AND FIRE.

Shyena of the Vedic hymns—daily
devours his entrails.” Boldetti (Osservazioni, 15, p. 60) gives a copy from
the painting in the cemetery of St. Sebastian, representing a Christian convert
and gravedigger named Diogenes, who wears on both his legs and right arm the
signs of the Svastika. The Mexicans and the Peruvians had it, and it is found as
the sacred Tan in the oldest tombs of Egypt.

It is, to say the least, a
strange coincidence, remarked even by some Christian clergymen, that Agnus Dei,
the Lamb of God, should have symbols identical with the Indian God Agni. While
Agnus Dei expiates and takes away the sins of the world, in one religion, the
God Agni in the other, likewise expiates sins against the Gods, man, the manes,
the soul and repeated sins, as shown in the six prayers accompanied by six
oblations (Colebrooke Essays, vol. i. p. 190).

If, then, we find these two—the
Cross and the Fire—so closely associated in the esoteric symbolism of nearly
every nation, it is because on the combined powers of the two rests the whole
plan of universal law. In astronomy, physics, chemistry, in the whole range of
natural philosophy, in short, they always come out as the invisible cause and
the visible result; and only metaphysics and alchemy —or shall we say meta-chemistry,
since we prefer coming a new word to shocking sceptical ears—can fully and
conclusively solve their mysterious meaning. An instance or two will suffice for
those who are willing to think over hints.

The central point, or the great
central Sun of the Kosmos, as the Kabalists call it, is the Deity. It is the
point of intersection between the two great conflicting powers—the centripetal
and the centrifugal forces—which drive the planets into their elliptical orbits,
making them trace a cross in their path through the Zodiac. These two terrible,
though as yet hypothetical and imaginary powers, preserve harmony and keep the
universe in steady, unceasing motion; and the four bent points of the Svastika
typify the revolution of the earth upon its axis. Plato calls the universe a
“blessed god,” made in a circle and decussated in the form of the letter X. So much
for astronomy.

In Masonry the Royal Arch
degree retains the Cross as the triple Egyptian Tau. It is the mundane circle
with the astronomical cross upon it rapidly revolving; the perfect square of the
Pythagorean mathematics in the scale of numbers, as its occult meaning is interpreted by Cornelius Agrippa. Fire is heat—the central point; the perpendicular
ray represents the male element—spirit, and the hori-

292————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

zontal one the female
element—matter. Spirit vivifies and fructifies matter, and everything proceeds
from the central point, the focus of life, and light, and heat, represented by
the terrestrial fire. So much again for physics and chemistry; for the field of
analogies is boundless, and universal laws are immutable and identical in their
outward and inward applications. Without intending to he disrespectful to
anyone, or to wander far away from truth, we think we may say that there are
strong reasons to believe that in their original sense the Christian Cross as
the cause, and eternal torment by hell-fire as the direct effect of negation of
the former, have more to do with these two ancient symbols than our Western
theologians are prepared to admit.

If Fire is the Deity with some
heathens, so in the Bible God is like wise the Life and the Light of the world.

If the Holy Ghost and Fire
cleanse and purify the Christian, Lucifer is also Light, and the ‘‘Son of the
morning.’’

Turn where we will, we are sure
to find these conjoint relics of ancient worship among almost every nation and
people. From the Aryans, the Chaldæans, the Zoroastrians, Peruvians, Mexicans,
Scandinavians, Celts, and ancient Greeks and Latins, they have descended in
their completeness to the modern Pârsi. The Phœnician Cabiri and the Greek Dioscuri are partially revived in every temple, cathedral, and village church;
while, as will now be shown, the Christian Bulgarians have even preserved the
sun-worship more than a thousand years since they were converted to
Christianity. And yet they appear none the less pagans than they were before,
for this is how they keep Christmas and New Year’s Day. To this time they call
this festival Sourjvaki, as it falls in with the festival in honour of the
ancient Slavonian God Sourja. In the Slavonian mythology this Deity—Sourja or
Sourva— evidently identical with the Aryan Surya—sun—is the God of heat,
fertility and abundance. The celebration of this festival is of immense
antiquity as, far before the clays of Christianity, the Bulgarians worshipped
Sourva, and consecrated New Year’s Day to this God, praying him to bless their
fields with fertility, and send them happiness and prosperity. This custom has
remained among them in all its primitive heathenism, and though it varies
according to localities, yet the rites and ceremonies are essentially the same.

On the eve of New Year’s Day,
the Bulgarians do no work, and are obliged to fast. Young betrothed maidens are
busy preparing a large platiy (cake) in which they place roots and young shoots
of various

293————————————————————CROSS AND FIRE.

forms, to each of which a name
is given, according to the shape of the root. Thus one means the house, another
represents the garden; others again, the mill, the vineyard, the horse, a hen, a
cat, and so on, according to the landed property and worldly possessions of the
family. Even articles of value such as jewelry and bags of money are
represented in this emblem of the horn of abundance. Besides all these, a large
and ancient silver coin is placed inside the cake; it is called babkaand and
is tied two ways with a red thread, which forms a cross. This coin is regarded
as the symbol of fortune. After sunset and other ceremonies including prayers,
addressed in the direction of the departing luminary, the whole family assemble
about a large round table, called paralya, on which are placed the
above-mentioned cake, dry vegetables, corn, a wax taper, and finally a large
censer containing incense of the best quality, to perfume the God. The head of
the family, usually the oldest in the family—either the grandfather or the
father himself— taking up the censer with the greatest veneration in one hand,
and the wax taper in the other, begins walking about the premises, incensing the
four corners, beginning and ending with the east, and reads various invocations,
which close with the Christian “Our Father, which art in heaven,” addressed to
Sourja. The taper is then laid away to be preserved throughout the whole year,
till the next festival. It is thought to have acquired marvellous healing
properties, and is lighted only upon occasions of family sickness, in which case
it is expected to cure the patient.

After this ceremony, the old
man takes his knife and cuts the cake into as many slices as there are members
of the household present. Each person, on receiving his or her share, makes
haste to open and search the piece. The happiest for the ensuing year, is he or
she who gets the part containing the old coin crossed with the scarlet thread;
he is considered the elect of Sourja, and everyone envies the fortunate
possessor. Then in order of importance come the emblems of the house, the
vineyard, and so on; and according to his finding, the finder reads his
horoscope for the coming year. Most unlucky is he who gets the cat; he turns
pale and trembles. Woe to him and misery, for he is surrounded by enemies, and
has to prepare for great trials.

At the same time, a large log
which represents a flaming altar, is set up in the chimney-place, and fire is
applied to it. This log burns in honour of Sourja, and is intended as an oracle
for the whole house. If it burns the whole night through till morning, without
the flame

294————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

dying out, it is a good sign;
otherwise the family prepares to see death that year, and deep lamentations end
the festival. Neither the montzee (young bachelor), nor the mommee (the maiden),
sleep that night. At midnight begins a series of soothsaying, magic, and various
rites, in which the burning log plays the part of the oracle. A young bud thrown
into the fire and bursting with a loud snap, is a sign of happy and speedy
marriage. Long after midnight the young couples leave their respective homes,
and begin visiting their acquaintances from house to house, offering and
receiving congratulations, and rendering thanks to the Deity. These couples are
called Souryakari, and each male carries a large branch ornamented with red
ribbons, old coins, and the image of Sourja, and as they wend their way, they
sing in chorus. Their chant is as original as it is peculiar, and merits translation, though of course it must lose in being rendered into a foreign language.
The following stanzas are addressed by them to those they visit:

Sourva, Sourva, Lord of the
season,

Happy New Year mayst thou send:

Health and fortune on this
household,

Success and blessings till next
year.

With good crops and full ears,

With gold and silk, and grapes
and fruit,

With barrels full of wine, and
stomachs full,

You and your house be blessed
by the God . .

His blessing on you all. Amen!
Amen! Amen!

The singing Sourvakari,
recompensed for their good wishes with a present at every house, go home at
early dawn. And this is how the symbolical exoteric Cross and Fire-worship of
old Aryâvartta go hand in hand in Christian Bulgaria.

WAR IN OLYMPUS—————

[Vol. I. No.
2, November, 1879.]

DARK clouds are gathering over
the hitherto cold and serene horizon of exact science, which forebode a squall.
Already two camps are forming among the votaries of scientific research. One
wages war on the other, and hard words are occasionally exchanged. The apple of
discord in this case is—Spiritualism. Fresh and illustrious victims are yearly decoyed away from the impregnable strongholds of materialistic negation, and
ensnared into examining and testing the alleged spiritual phenomena. And we all
know that when a true Scientist examines them without prejudice well, he
generally ends like Professor Hare, Mr. William Crookes, F.R.S., the great
Alfred Russell Wallace, another F.R.S., and so many other eminent men of
science—he passes over to the enemy.

We are really curious to know
what will be the new theory advanced in the present crisis by the sceptics, and
how they will account for such apostasy of several of their luminaries, as has
just occurred. The venerable accusations of non compos mentis and “dotage” will
not bear another refurbishing. The eminent perverts are increasing numerically
so fast, that if mental incapacity is charged upon all of them who
experimentally satisfy themselves that tables can talk sense, and mediums float
through the air, it might augur ill for science; there might soon be none but
weakened brains in the learned societies. They may, possibly, for a time find
some consolation in accounting for the lodgment of the extraordinary “delusion”
in very scholarly heads, upon the theory of atavism—the mysterious law of latent
transmission, so much favoured by the modern schools of Darwinian evolutionism—
especially in Germany, as represented by that thorough-going apostle of the
modern “struggle for culture,” Ernst Hæckle professor at Jena. They may attribute the
belief of their colleagues in the phenomena to certain molecular movements of
the cell in the ganglia of their once

296————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

powerful brains, hereditarily
transmitted to them by their ignorant mediæval ancestors. Or, again, they may split
their ranks, and establishing an imperium in imperio “divide and conquer” still. All this
is possible; but time alone will show which of the parties will come off best.

We have been led to these
reflections by a row now going On between German and Russian professors—all
eminent and illustrious savants. The Teutons and Slavs, in the case under observation,
are not fighting according to their nationality, but conformably to their
respective beliefs and unbeliefs. Having concluded, for the occasion, an
offensive as well as a defensive alliance, regardless of race—they have broken
up in two camps, one representing the Spiritualists, and the other the sceptics.
And now war to the knife is declared. Leading one party, are Professors Zollner,
Ulrizzi and Fichte, Butlerof and Wagner, of the Leipzig, Halle and St.
Petersburg Universities; the other follows Professors Wundt, Mendelevef and a
host of other German and Russian celebrities. Hardly has Zollner—a most renowned
astronomer and physicist——printed his confession of faith in Dr. Slade’s
mediumistic phenomena and, set his learned colleagues aghast when Professor
Ulrizzi, of the Halle University, arouses the wrath of the Olympus of science
by publishing a pamphlet entitled, The so-called Spiritulism a Scientific
Question, intended as a complete refutation of the arguments of Professor Wundt,
of the Leipzig University, against the modern belief, and contained in another
pamphlet called by its auther Spiri- tualism—The so-called Scientific Question. And
now steps in another active combatant, Mr. Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry and
Natural Sciences in St. Petersburg, who narrates his experiments in London, with
the medium Williams, and thus rouses up a most ferocious polemic. The
humoristical illustrated paper Kladderadatsch executes a war-dance, and shouts
with joy, while the more serious conservative papers are indignant. Pressed
behind their last entrenchments by the cool and uncontrovertible assertions of a
most distinguished naturalist, the critics, led forward by the St. Petersburg
star, Mr. Burenin, seem desperate, and evidently short of ammunition, since they
are reduced to the expedient of trying to rout the enemy with the most
remarkable paradoxes. The pro and con of the dispute are too interesting, and
our posterity might complain, were the incidents suffered to be left beyond the
reach of English and American readers interested in Spiritualism, by remaining
confined to the German and Russian newspapers. So,

297————————————————————WAR
IN OLYMPUS.

Homer-like, we will follow the
combatants and condense this modern Iliad for the benefit of our friends.

After
several years of diligent research and investigation of the phenomena, Messrs
Wagner and Butlerof both
distinguished savants and professors of St. Petersburg University, became
thoroughly convinced of the reality of the weird manifestations. As a result, both wrote
numerous and strong articles in the leading periodicals in defence of the
‘‘mischievous epidemic’’—as in his moments of ‘‘ unconscious cerebration” and
“prepossession” in favour of his own hobby, Dr. Carpenter calls Spiritualism.
Both of the above eminent gentle men are endowed with those precious qualities,
which are the more to be respected as they are so seldom met with among our men
of science. These qualities, admitted by Mr. Burenin, their critic, himself,
are:

(1) a serious and profound
conviction that what they defend is true; (2) an unwavering courage in stating
at every hazard, before a prejudiced and inimical public that such is their
conviction; (3) clearness and consecutiveness in their statements; (4) the serene
calmness and impartiality with which they treat the opinions of their opponents;
(5) a full and profound acquaintance with the subject under discussion. The
combination of the qualities enumerated, adds their critic,

Leads us to regard the recent
article by Professor Butlerof, Empiricism and dogmatism in the Domain of
Mediumship as
one of those essays whose commanding significance cannot be denied and winch are
sure to strongly impress the readers. Such articles are positively rare in our
periodicals; rare because of the originality of the author’s conclusions; and
because of the clear, precise, and serious presentation of facts.

The article so eulogized may be
summed up in a few words. We will not stop to enumerate the marvels of spiritual
phenomena witnessed by Professor Zöllner with Dr. Slade and defended by
Professor Butlerof, since they are no more marvellous than the latter
gentleman’s personal experience in this direction with Mr. Williams, a medium of
London, in 1876. The seances took place in a London hotel in the room occupied by the
Hon. Alexandre Aksakof, Russian Imperial Councillor, in which, with the
exception of this gentleman, there were but two other persons—Professor Butlerof
and the medium. Confederacy was thus utterly impossible. And now, what took
place under these conditions, which so impressed one of the first scientists of
Russia? Simply this:

Mr. Williams, the medium, was
made to sit with his hands, feet, and even his body tightly bound with cords to
his chair, which was placed

298————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

in a dead-wall corner of the
room, behind Mr. Butlerof’s plaid hung across so as to form a screen. Williams
soon fell into a kind of lethargic stupor, known among Spiritualists as the
trance condition, and ‘spirits” began to appear before the eyes of the
investigators. Various voices were heard, and loud sentences pronounced by the
“invisibles,” from every part of the room; things—toilet appurtenances and so
forth—began flying in every
direction through the air, and finally “John King”—a sort of king of the spooks,
who has been famous for years— made his appearance bodily. But we must allow
Professor Butlerof to tell his phenomenal story himself.

We first saw several bright
lights moving in the air, and inmediately after appeared the full figure of
“John King.” His apparition is generally preceded by a greenish phosphoric
light which, gradually becoming brighter, illuminates, more and more, the
whole bust of “John King.” Then it is that those present perceive that the light
emanates from some kind of luminous object held by the ‘‘spirit.’’ The face of
a man with a thick black beard becomes clearly distinguishable: the head is
enveloped in a white turban. The figure appeared outside the cabinet (that is to
say, the screened corner where the medium sat), and finally approached us. We
saw it each time for a few seconds; then rapidly waning, the light was extinguished and the figure became invisible to reappear again in a moment or two;
then from the surrounding darkness “John’s” voice was heard proceeding from the
spot on which he had appeared mostly, though not always, when he had already
disappeared. “John” asked us: “What can I do for you?” and Mr. Aksakof
requested him to rise up to the ceiling and speak to us. In accordance with the
wish expressed, the figure suddenly appeared above the table and towered majestically above our heads to the ceiling, which became all illuminated with the
luminous object held in the spirit’s hand, when ‘‘John’’ was quite under the
ceiling he shouted down to us: ‘‘Will that do?"

During another seance M.
Butlerof asked “John” to approach him quite near, which the ‘‘spirit” did, and
so gave him the opportunity of seeing clearly “the sparkling, clear eyes of
John.” Another spirit, ‘‘Peter,” though he never put in a visible appearance
during the seances, yet conversed with Messrs. Butlerof and Aksakof, wrote for
them on paper furnished by them, and so forth.

Though the learned Professor
minutely enumerates all the precautions he had taken against possible fraud,
the critic is not yet satisfied, and asks, pertinently enough:

Why did not the respectable
savant catch ‘‘John’’ in his arms, when the spirit was hut a foot distant from
him? Again, why did not both Messrs. Aksakof and Bntlerof try to get hold of
“John’s” legs, when he was mounting to the ceiling? Indeed they ought to have
done all tins, if they are really so anxious to learn the truth for their own
sake, as for that of science, when they struggle to lead on

299————————————————————WAR IN OLYMPUS.

toward the domains of the
“other world.” And, had they complied with such a simple and, at the same time,
very little scientific test, there would be no more need for them, perhaps, to .
. . further explain the scientific importance of the spiritual manifestations.

That this importance is not
exaggerated, and has as much significance for the world of science, as for that
of religious thought, is proved by so many philosophical minds speculating upon
the modern “delusion.” This is what Fichte, the learned German savant, says of
it.

Modern Spiritualism chiefly
proves the existence of that which, in common par. lance, is very vaguely and
inaptly termed “aftftarilion of spirits.” If we concede the reality of such
apparitions, then they become an undeniable, practical proof of the
continuation of our personal, conscious existence (beyond the portals of death).
And such a tangible, fully demonstrated fact cannot he otherwise but beneficent
in this epoch, which, having fallen into a dreary denial of immortality,
thinks, in the proud self-sufficiency of its vast intellect, that it has already
happily left behind it every superstition of the kind.

If such a tangible evidence
could be really found, and demonstrated to us, beyond any doubt or cavil,
reasons Fichte further on :

If the reality of the
continuation of our lives after death were furnished us upon positive proof, in
strict accordance with the logical elements of experimental natural sciences,
then it would be, indeed, a result with which, owing to its nature and peculiar
significance for humanity, no other result to be met with in all the history of
civilization could he compared. The old problem of man’s destination upon earth
would thus be solved, and consciousness in humanity would he elevated one step.
That which, hitherto, could be revealed to man but in the domain of blind
faith, presentiment and passionate hope, would become to him—positive knowledge; he
would have acquired the certainty that he was a member of an eternal, a
spiritual world, in which he would continue living, and that his temporary
existence upon this earth forms but a fractional portion of a future eternal
life, and that it is only there that he would be enabled to perceive, and fully
comprehend his real destiny. Having acquired this profound conviction, mankind
would be thoroughly impressed with a new and animating comprehension of life,
and its intellectual perceptions opened to an idealism strong with
incontrovertible facts. This would prove tantamount to a complete reconstruction
of man in relation to his existence as an entity and his mission upon earth; it
would be, so to say, a “new birth.” Whoever has lost all inner convictions
as to his eternal destiny’, his faith in eternal life, whether the ease be that
of an isolated individuality, a whole nation, or time representative of a
certain epoch, he or it may be regarded as having had uprooted, and to the very
core, all sense of that invigorating force which alone lends itself to
self-devotion and to progress. Such a man becomes what was inevitable—an
egotistical, selfish, sensual being, concerned wholly for his self-preservation.
His culture, his enlightenment and civilization, can serve him but as a help and
ornament toward that life of sensualism, or, at best, to guard him from all that
can harm it.

300————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Such is the enormous importance
attributed by Professor Fichte of Germany, and Professor Butlerof of Russia, to
the spiritual phenomena; and we may say the feeling is more than sincerely
echoed in England by Mr. A. R. Wallace, F.R.S.

An influential American
scientific journal uses equally strong language when speaking of the value that
a scientific demonstration of the survival of the human soul would have for the
world. If Spiritualism prove true, it says,

It will become the one grand
event of the world’s history; it will give an unperishable lustre of glory to
the nineteenth century. Its discoverer will have no rival in renown, and his
name will be written high above any other. If the pretensions of Spiritualism
have a rational foundation, no more important work has been offered to men of
science then their verification. (Scientific American, 1874, as quoted in
Olcott’s People from The Other World, Preface, p. v.)

And now we will see what the
stubborn Russian critic (who seems to be but the mouth-piece of European
materialistic science), has to say in response to the unanswerable arguments
and logic of Messrs. Fichte and Butlerof. If scepticism has no stronger
arguments to oppose to Spiritualism but the following original paradox, then we
will have to declare it worsted in the dispute. Instead of the beneficial
results foretold by Fichte in the case of the final triumph of Spiritualism,
the critic forecasts quite a different state of things.

As soon as such scientific
methods shall have demonstrated, beyond doubt or cavil, to the general
satisfaction, that our world is-crammed with souls of men who have preceded
us, and whom we will all join in turn; as soon as it shall be proven that these
“souls of the deceased” call communicate with mortals, all the earthly physical
science of the eminent scholars will vanish like a soap-bubble, and will have
lost all its interest for us living men. Why should people care for their proportionately short life upon earth, once that they have the positive assurance
and conviction of another life to come after bodily death; a death which does
not in the least preclude conscious relations with the world of the living, or
even their post mortem participation in all its interests? Once that, with the help
of science, based on mediumistic experiments and the discoveries of
Spiritualism, such relations shall have been firmly established, they will
naturally become every day more and more intimate; an extraordinary friendship
will ensue between this and the ‘‘other’’ world; that other world will begin
divulging to this one the most occult mysteries of life and death, and the
hitherto most inaccessible laws of time universe—those which now exact the
greatest efforts of man’s mental powers. Finally, nothing will remains for us
in this temporary world to either do or desire, but to pass away as soon as
possible into the world of eternity. No inventions, no observations, no
sciences will be any more needed! Why should people exercise their brains,
for instance, in perfecting the telegraphs, when nothing else will he required
but to

301————————————————————WAR IN OLYMPUS.

be on good terms with spirits
in order to avail of their services for the instantaneous transmission of
thoughts and objects, not only from Europe to America, but even to the moon, if
so desired? The following are a few of the results which a communion de facto
between this world and the “other,’’ that certain men of science are hoping to
establish by the help of Spiritualism, will inevitably lead us to: the complete
extinction of all science, and even of the human race, which will be ever
rushing onward to a better life. The learned and scholarly phantasists who
are so anxious to promote the science of Spiritualism, of a close
communication between the two worlds, ought to bear the above in mind.

To which the ‘‘scholarly phantasists’’ would be quite warranted in answering that one would have to bring
his own mind to the exact measure of microscopic capacity required to elaborate
such a theory as this, before he could take it into consideration at all. Is the
above meant to be offered as an objection for serious consideration? Strange
logic! We are asked to believe that, because these men of science, who now
believe in naught but matter, and thus try to fit every phenomenon—even of a
mental and spiritual character—to the Procrustean bed of their own preconceived
hobbies, would find themselves, by the mere strength of circumstances, forced in
their turn, to fit these cherished hobbies to truth, however unwelcome, and to
facts wherever found—that because of that, science will lose all its charm for
humanity. Nay—life itself will become a burden! There are millions upon millions of people who, without believing in Spiritualism at all, yet have faith in
another and a better world. And were that blind faith to become positive
knowledge indeed, it could but better humanity.

Before closing his scathing
criticism upon the “credulous men of science,” our reviewer sends one more bomb
in their direction, which unfortunately, like many other explosive shells,
misses the culprits and wounds the whole group of their learned colleagues. We
translate the missile verbatim, this time for the benefit of all the European
and American academicians.

Speaking of Butlerof and his
article, he adds:

The eminent professor, among
other things, makes the most of the strange fact that Spiritualism gains with
every day more and more converts within the corporation of our great
scientists. He enumerates a long list of English and German names among
illustrious men of science, who have more or less confessed themselves in
favour of the spiritual doctrines. Among these names we find such as are quite
authoritative, those of the greatest luminaries of science. Such a fact is, to
say the least, very striking, and, in any case, lends a great weight to
Spiritualism. But we have only to ponder coolly over it, to come very easily to
the conclusion that it is just among such great men of science that
Spiritualism is most likely to spread

302————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

and find ready converts. With
all their powerful intellects and gigantic knowledge, our great scholars are
firstly, men of sedentary habits, and, secondly, they are, with scarcely an
exception, men with diseased and shattered nerves, inclined toward an
abnormal development of an overstrained brain. Such sedentary men are the
easiest to hoodwink; a clever charlatan will make an easier prey of and
bamboozle with far more facility, a scholar than an unlearned but practical man. Hallucination will
far sooner get hold of persons inclined to nervous receptivity, especially if
they once concentrate themselves upon some peculiar ideas, or a favourite hobby.
This, I believe, will explain the fact that we see so many men of science
enrolling themselves in the army of Spiritualists.

We need not stop to enquire how
Messrs. Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Lewes, and other eminent
scientific and philosophical sceptics, will like such a prospect of rickety
ganglionic centres, collective softening of the brain, and the resulting
“hallucinations.” The argument is not only an impertinent naivete but a
literary monstrosity.

We are far from agreeing
entirely with the views of Professor Butler, or even Mr. Wallace, as to the
agencies at work behind the modern phenomena; yet between the extremes of
spiritual negation and affirmation, there ought to be a middle ground; only pure
philosophy can establish truth upon firm principles; and no philosophy can he
complete unless it embraces both physics and metaphysics. Mr. Tyndall, who
declares in Science and Man that “metaphysics will be welcomed when it abandons
its pretensions to scientific discovery, and consents to be ranked as a kind of
poetry,” opens himself to the criticism of posterity. Meanwhile, he must not
regard it as an impertinence if his Spiritualistic opponents retort with the
answer that “physics will always be welcomed, when it abandons its pretension to
psychological discovery.” The physicists will have to consent to be regarded in
a near future as no more than supervisors and analysts of physical results, who
have to leave the spiritual causes to those who believe in them. Whatever the
issue of the present quarrel, we fear, though, that Spiritualism has made its
appearance a century too late. Our age is preeminently one of extremes. The
earnest philosophical, yet reverent, doubters are few, and the name for those
who rush to the opposite extreme is—Legion. We are the children of our century.
Thanks to that same law of atavism, it seems to have inherited from its
parent—the eighteenth—the century of both Voltaire and Jonathan Edwards—all its
extreme scepticism, and, at the same time, religious credulity and bigoted
intolerance. Spiritualism is an abnormal and premature outgrowth, standing
between the two; and, though it stands

303————————————————————WAR
IN OLYMPUS.

right on the highway to truth,
its ill-defined beliefs make it wander on through by-paths which lead to
anything but philosophy. Its future depends wholly upon the timely help it can
receive from honest science—that science which scorns no
truth. It was, perhaps, when thinking of the opponents of the latter, that
Alfred de Musset wrote the following magnificent apostrophe:

Sleep’st thou content,
Voltaire?

And thy dread smile hovers it
still above

Thy fleshless bones.
. . . ?

Thine age they call too young
to understand thee;

This one should suit thee
better—
Thy men are born!

And the huge edifice that, day
and night, thy great hands undermined,
Is fallen upon us.
. . .

A LAND OF MYSTERY—————

[Vol. I. Nos. 6, 7, 9 and
11,
March, April, June and August, 1880.]

WHETHER one surveys the imposing
ruins of Memphis or Palmyra; stands at the foot of the great pyramid of Ghizeh;
wanders along the shores of the Nile; or ponders amid the desolate fastnesses of
the long-lost and mysterious Petra; however clouded and misty the origin of
these pre-historic relics may appear, one nevertheless finds at least certain
fragments of firm ground upon which to build conjecture. Thick as may be the
curtain behind which the history of these anti- quities is hidden, still there
are rents here and there through which one may catch glimpses of light. We are
acquainted with the descendants of the builders; and, however superficially, we
also know the story of the nations whose vestiges are scattered around us. Not
so with the antiquities of the New World of the two Americas. There, all along
the coast of Peru, all over the Isthmus and North America, in the canyons of the
Cordilleras, in the impassable gorges of the Andes, and, especially, beyond the
valley of Mexico, lie, ruined and desolate, hundreds of once mighty cities, lost
to the memory of men, and having themselves lost even a name. Buried in dense
forests, entombed in inaccessible valleys, sometimes sixty feet underground,
from the day of their discovery until now they have ever remained a riddle,
baffling all enquiry, and they have been muter than the Egyptian Sphinx herself.
We know nothing of America prior to the Spanish Conquest—positively nothing. No
chronicles, not even comparatively modern ones, survive; there are no
traditions, even among the aboriginal tribes, as to its past events. We are as
ignorant of the races that built these cyclopean structures as of the strange
worship that inspired the antediluvian sculptors who carved upon hundreds of
miles of walls, of monuments, monoliths and altars, these weird hieroglyphics,
these groups of animals and men, pictures of an unknown life and lost arts—scenes so fantastic and wild,
at times, that they involuntarily suggest

305————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

the idea of a feverish dream,
whose phantasmagoria suddenly crystallized into granite at the wave of some
mighty magician’s hand, to bewilder the coming generations for ever and ever. So
late as the beginning of the present century the very existence of such a wealth
of antiquities was unknown. The petty, suspicious jealousy of the Spaniards had,
from the first, created a Chinese wall between their American possessions and
the too curious traveller; and the ignorance and fanaticism of the conquerors,
and their carelessness as to all but the satisfaction of their insatiable greed,
had precluded scientific research. Even the enthusiastic accounts of Cortez and
his army of brigands and priests, and of Pizarro and his robbers and monks, as
to the splendour of the temples, palaces and cities of Mexico and Peru, were
long discredited. In his History of America, Dr. Robertson goes so far as to
inform his reader that the houses of the ancient Mexicans were

Mere huts, built with turf or
mud, or the branches of trees, like those of the rudest Indians.*

And, upon the testimony of some
Spaniards, he even risked the assertion that there was not

In all the extent of that vast
empire a single monument or vestige of any building more ancient than the
Conquest.

It was reserved to the great
Alexander Humboldt to vindicate the truth. In 1803 a flood of new light was
poured into the world of arch by this eminent and learned traveller. In this he
luckily proved but the pioneer of future discoverers. He then described but
Mitla, or the Vale of the Dead, Xoxichalco, and the great pyramidal Temple of
Cholula. But after him came Stephens, Catherwood, and Squier; and in Peru,
D’Orbigny and Dr. Tschuddi. Since then numerous travellers have visited and
given us accurate details of many of the antiquities. But how many more yet
remain not only unexplored, but even unknown, no one can tell. As regards
prehistoric buildings, both Peru and Mexico are rivals of Egypt. Equalling the
latter in the immensity of her cyclopean structures, Peru surpasses her in their
number; while Cholula exceeds the grand pyramid of Cheops in breadth, if not in
height. Works of public utility, such as walls, fortifications, terraces,
water-courses, aqueducts, bridges, temples, burial-grounds, whole cities, and
exquisitely paved roads, hundreds of—————

* See Stephens’ Central America.

306————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

miles in length, stretch in an
unbroken line, almost covering the land as with a net. On the coast they are
built of sun-dried bricks; in the mountains, of porphyritic lime, granite and
silicated sandstones. Of the long generations of peoples who built them, history
knows nothing, and even tradition is silent. As a matter of course, most of
these lithic remains are covered with a dense vegetation. Whole forests have
grown out of the cities’ broken hearts, and, with a few exceptions, everything
is in ruin. But one may judge of what once was by that which yet remains.

With a most flippant unconcern,
the Spanish historians refer nearly every ruin to Incal times. No greater
mistake can be made. The hieroglyphics which sometimes cover whole walls and
monoliths from top to bottom are, as they were from the first, a dead letter to
modern science. But they were equally a dead letter to the Incas, though the
history of the latter can be traced to the eleventh century. They had no clue
to the meaning of these inscriptions, but attributed all such to their unknown
predecessors; thus barring the presumption of their own descent from the first
civilizers of their country. Briefly, the Incal history runs thus:

Inca is the Quichua title for
chief or emperor, and the name of the ruling and most aristocratic race or
rather caste of the land which was governed by them for an unknown period, prior
to, and until, the Spanish Conquest. Some place their first appearance in Peru
from regions unknown in 1021; others, also, on conjecture. at five centuries
after the biblical “flood,” and according to the modest notions of Christian
theology. Still the latter theory is undoubtedly nearer truth than the former.
The Incas, judged by their exclusive privileges, power and ‘‘infallibility,’’
are the antipodal counterpart of the Brâhmanical caste of India. Like the
latter, the Incas claimed direct descent from the Deity, which, as in the case
of the Suryavansha dynasty of India, was the Sun. According to the sole but
general tradition, there was a time when the whole of tile population of the now
New World was broken tip into independent, warring and bar barian tribes. At
last the “Highest” Deity—the Sun—took pity upon them, and, in order to rescue
the people from ignorance, sent down upon earth to teach them his two children,
Manco Capac, and his sister and wife, Mama Ocollo Huaco—the counterparts, again,
of the Egyptian Osiris, and his sister and wife, Isis, as well as of the
several Hindu Gods and demi-Gods and their wives. These two made their appear-

307————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

ance on a beautiful island in
Lake Titicaca—of which we will speak further on—and thence proceeded northward
to Cuzco, later on the capital of the Incas, where they at once began to
disseminate civilization. Collecting together the various races from all parts
of Peru, the divine couple then divided their labour. Manco Capac taught men
agriculture, legislation, architecture and arts; while Mama Ocollo instructed
the women in weaving, spinning, embroidery and house keeping. It is from this
celestial pair that the Incas claimed their descent; and yet they were utterly
ignorant of the people who built the stupendous and now ruined cities which
cover the whole area of their empire, and which then extended from the equator
over thirty-seven degrees of latitude, and included not only the western slope
of the Andes, but the whole mountain chain with its eastern declivities to the
Amazon and Orinoco. As the direct descendants of the Sun, they were the high
priests of the state religion, and at the same time emperors and the highest
statesmen in the land; in virtue of which, they, again like the Brâhmans arrogated
to themselves a divine superiority over the ordinary mortals, thus founding,
like the “twice born,” an exclusive and aristocratic caste—the Inca race.
Considered as the son of the Sun, every reigning Inca was the high priest, the
oracle, chief captain in war, and absolute sovereign; thus realizing the double
office of Pope and King, and so long anticipating the dream of the Roman
Pontiffs. To his command the blindest obedience was exacted; his person was
sacred; and he was the object of divine honours. The highest officers of the
land could not appear shod in his presence; this mark of respect pointing
again to an Oriental origin; while the custom of boring the ears of the youths
of royal blood and inserting in them golden rings, ‘‘which were increased in
size as they advanced in rank, until the distension of the cartilage became a
positive deformity,” suggests a strange resemblance between the sculptured
portraits of many of them that we find in the more modern ruins, and the images
of Buddha and of some Hindu deities, not to mention our contemporary dandies of
Siam, Burmah and Southern India. Once more like India, in the palmy days of the
Brâhman power, no one had the right to receive an education or study religion
except the young men of the privileged Inca caste. And, when the reigning Inca
died, or, as it was termed, “was called home to the mansion of his father,” a
very large number of his attendants and his wives were made to die with him,
during the ceremonies of his obsequies, just as we find in the

308————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

old annals of Râjasthân, and
down to the but just abolished custom of Sati. Taking all this into
consideration, the arch cannot remain satisfied with the brief remark of certain
historians that:

In this tradition we trace only
another version of the story of the civilization Common to all primitive
nations, and that imposture of a celestial relationship whereby designing rulers
and cunning priests have sought to secure their ascendency among men.

No more is it an explanation to
say that:

Manco Capac is the almost exact
counterpart of the Chinese Foh, the Hindu Buddha, the terrestrial Osiris of
Egypt, the Quetzacoatl of Mexico, and Votan of Central America.

For all this is but too
evident. What we want to learn is, how came these nations, so antipodal to each
other as India, Egypt and America, to offer such extraordinary points of
resemblance, not only in their general religious, political and social views,
but sometimes in the minutest details. The task much-needed is to find out which
one of them preceded the other; to explain how these peoples came to plant at
the four corners of the earth nearly identical architecture and arts, unless
there was a time when, as asserted by Plato and believed in by more than one
modern archæologist, no ships were needed for such a transit, as the two worlds formed
but one continent.

According to the most recent
researches, there are five distinct styles of architecture in the Andes alone,
of which the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco was the latest. And this one, perhaps,
is the only structure of importance which, according to modern travellers, can
be safely attributed to the Incas, whose imperial glories are believed to have
been the last gleam of a civilization dating back for untold ages. Dr. E. R.
Heath, of Kansas, thinks that

Long before Manco Capac the
Andes had been the dwelling-place of races whose beginnings must have been
coeval with the savages of Western Europe. The gigantic architecture points to
the cyclopean family, the founders of the Temple of Babel and the Egyptian
pyramids. The Grecian scroll found in man)’ places is borrowed (?) from the
Egyptians; the mode of burial and embalming their dead points to Egypt.

Further on, this learned
traveller finds that the skulls taken from the burial-grounds, according to
craniologists, represent three distinct races: the Chinchas, who occupied the
western part of Peru from the Andes to the Pacific; the Aymaras, dwellers of the
elevated plains of Peru and Bolivia, on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca; and
the Huancas, who “occupied the plateau between the chains of the Andes,

309————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

north of Lake Titicaca to the
ninth degree of south latitude.’’ To confound the buildings of the epoch of the
Incas in Peru, and of Montezuma and his Caciques, in Mexico, with the aboriginal
monuments, is fatal to archæology. While Cholula, Uxmal, Quiche, Pachacamac and
Chichen were all perfectly preserved and occupied at the time of the invasion of
the Spanish banditti, there are hundreds of ruined cities and works which were
in the same state of ruin even then; whose origin was as unknown to the
conquered Incas and Caciques as it is to us; and which are undoubtedly the
remains of unknown and now extinct peoples. The strange shapes of the heads and
profiles of the human figures upon the monoliths of Copan are a warrant for the
correctness of the hypothesis. The pronounced difference between the skulls of
these races and the Indo-European skulls was at first attributed to mechanical
means, used by the mothers for giving a peculiar conformation to the head of
their children during infancy, as is often done by other tribes and peoples.
But, as the same author tells us, the finding in

A mummy of a fœtus of seven or
eight months having the same conformation of skull, has placed a doubt as to
the certainty of this fact.

And besides hypothesis, we have
scientific and unimpeachable proof of a civilization that must have existed in
Peru ages ago. Were we to give the number of thousands of years that have
probably elapsed since then, without first showing good reasons for the
assumption, the reader might feel like holding his breath. So let us try.

The Peruvian
guano (huano), that precious fertilizer, composed of the excrement of sea-fowls,
intermixed with their decaying bodies, eggs, remains of seal, and so on, which
has accumulated upon the isles of the Pacific and the coast of South America,
and its formation, are now well known. It was Humboldt who first discovered and
drew the world’s attention to it in 1804. And, while describing the deposits as
covering the granite rocks of the Chincas and other islands to the depth of
fifty or sixty feet, he states that the accumulation of the preceding 300
years, since the conquest, had formed only a few lines in thick-ness. How
many thousands of years, then, it required to form this deposit sixty feet deep,
is a matter of simple calculation. In this connection we may now quote
something of a discovery spoken of in the ‘‘Peruvian Antiquities.” *—————

*
A paper published by Dr. F. R.
heath in the Kansas City Review of Science and Industry, November, 1878.

310————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Buried sixty-two feet under the
ground, on the Chinca islands, stone-idols and water-pots were found, while
thirty-three and thirty-five feet below the surface were wooden idols. From
beneath the guano on the Guanapi islands, just south of Truxillo, and Macabi
just north, mummies, birds and birds’ eggs, gold and silver ornaments were
taken. On the Macabi the labourers found some large valuable golden vases, which
they broke up and divided among themselves, even though offered weight for
weight in gold coin, and thus relics of the greatest interest to the scientist
have been lost for ever. He who can determine the centuries necessary to
deposit thirty and sixty feet of guano on these islands, remembering that since
the Conquest three hundred years ago, no appreciable increase in depth has been
noted, can give you an idea of the antiquity of these relics.

If we confine ourselves to a
strictly arithmetical calculation, then allowing twelve lines to an inch, and
twelve inches to a foot, and allowing one line to every century, we are forced
to believe that the people who made these precious gold vases lived 864,000
years ago! Leave an ample margin for errors, and give twelve lines to a century—say an inch to every
100 years—and we will yet have 72,000 years back a
civilization which—if we judge by its public works, the durability of its
constructions, and the grandeur of its buildings—equalled, and in some things
certainly surpassed, our own.

Having well-defined ideas as to
the periodicity of cycles, for the world as well as for nations, empires and
tribes, we are convinced that our present modern civilization is but the latest
dawn of that which already has been seen an innumerable number of times upon
this planet. It may not be exact science, but it is both inductive and deductive
logic, based upon theories far less hypothetical and more palpable than many
another theory, held as strictly scientific. To express it in the words of Prof.
T. E. Nipher, of St. Louis, “we are not the friends of theory but of truth,” and
until truth is found, we welcome every new theory, however unpopular at first,
for fear of rejecting in our ignorance the stone which may in time become the
very corner-stone of the truth.

The errors of scientific men
are well-nigh countless, not because they are men of science, but because they
are men, says the same scientist; and
further quotes the noble words of Faraday:

Occasionally, and frequently
the exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reservation. It may be
very distasteful and a great fatigue to suspend a conclusion, but as we are not
infallible, so we ought to he cautions. (Experimental Researches, 24th Series.)

It is doubtful whether, with
the exception of a few of the most prominent ruins, a detailed account of the
so-called American anti-

311————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

quities ever was attempted.
Yet, in order to bring out the more prominently a point of comparison, such a
work would be absolutely necessary. If the history of religion and of mythology
and—far more important—the origin, developing and final grouping of the human
species are ever to be unravelled, we have to trust to archæological research rather than
to the hypothetical deductions of philology. We must begin by massing together
the concrete imagery of the early thought, more eloquent in its stationary form
than the verbal expression of the same, the latter being but too liable, in its
manifold interpretations, to be distorted in a thousand ways. This would afford
us an easier and more trustworthy clue. Archæological Societies ought to have a whole
cyclopædia of the world’s remains, with a collation of the most important of the
speculations as to each locality. For, however fantastic and wild some of these
hypotheses may seem at first glance, yet each has a chance of proving useful at
some time. It is often more beneficial to know what a thing is not than to know
what it is, as Max Muller truly tells us.

It is not within the limits of
an article in our paper that any such object could be achieved. Availing
ourselves, though, of the reports of the Government surveyors, trustworthy
travellers, men of science, and even our own limited experience, we will try in
future issues to give to our Hindu readers, who possibly may never have heard
of these antiquities, a general idea of them. Our information is drawn from
every reliable source; the survey of the Peruvian antiquities being mostly due
to Dr. Heath’s able paper, above mentioned.

II.

Evidently we Theosophists are
not the only iconoclasts in this world of mutual deception and hypocrisy. We are
not the only ones who believe in cycles, and, opposing the biblical chronology,
lean towards those opinions which are secretly shared by so many, but publicly
avowed by so few. We Europeans are just emerging from the very bottom of a new
cycle, and progressing upwards, while the Asiatics— Indians especially—are the
lingering remnants of the nations which filled the world in the previous and now
departed cycles. Whether the Aryans sprang from the archaic Americans, or the
latter from the prehistoric Aryans, is a question which no living man can
decide. But that there must have been an intimate connection at some time
between the old Aryans, the pre-historic inhabitants of America—whatever

312————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

might have been their name—and
the ancient Egyptians, is a matter more easily proved than contradicted. And
probably, if there ever was such a connection, it must have taken place at a
time when the Atlantic did not yet divide the two hemispheres as it does now.

In his
Peruvian Antiquities,
Dr. Heath, of Kansas City—rara avis among scientific men, a fearless searcher,
who accepts truth wherever he finds it, and is not afraid to speak it out in the
very face of dogmatic opposition—sums up his impressions of the Peruvian relics
in the following words:

Three times the Andes sank
hundreds of feet beneath the ocean level, and again were slowly brought to their
present height. A man’s life would be too short to count even the centuries
consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru has risen eighty feet since it
felt the tread of Pizarro. Supposing the Andes to have risen uniformly and
without interruption, 70,000 years must have elapsed before they reached their
present altitude.

Who knows, then, but that Jules
Verne’s fanciful idea* regarding the lost continent Atlantis may be near the
truth? Who can say that, where now the Atlantic Ocean is, a continent did not
formerly exist, with its dense population, advanced in the arts and sciences,
who, as they found their land sinking beneath the waters, retired part east and
part west, thus populating the two hemispheres? This would explain the
similarity of their arch structures and races, and their differ-ences, modified
by and adapted to the character of their respective climates and countries. Thus
would the llama and camel differ, although of the same species; thus the
algoraba and espino trees; thus the Iroquois Indians of North America and the
most ancient Arabs call the constellation of the “Great Bear” by the same name;
thus various nations, cut off from all intercourse or knowledge of each other,
divide the zodiac into twelve constellations, apply to them the same names, and
the Northern Hindus apply the name Andes to their Himalayan mountains, as did
the South Americans to their principal chain.† Must we fall in the old rut, and
suppose no other means of populating the Western Hemisphere except “by way of
Behring’s Strait”? Must we still locate a geographical Eden in the East, and
suppose a land, equally adapted to man and as old geologically, must wait the
aimless wanderings of the “lost tribes of Israel” to become populated?

Go where we may, to explore the
antiquities of America—whether of Northern, Central, or Southern America—we are
first of all impressed with the magnitude of these relics of ages and races
unknown, and then with the extraordinary similarity they present to the mounds
and—————

* This "idea" is plainly expressed
and asserted as a fact by Plato in his Banquet; and was taken up by Bacon in his
New Atlantis.

† The name America,” said I, in Isis Unveiled
(vol. ii. p. 591(, three years ago, ‘may one day he found closely
related to Meru, the sacred mount in the centre of the seven continents.” When
first discovered, America was found to bear among some native tribes the name of
Atlanta. In the states of Central America we find the name Amerih, signifying,
like I a great mountain. The origin of the Kamas Indians of America is also
unknown.

313————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

ancient structures of old
India, of Egypt and even of some parts of Europe. Whoever has seen one of these
mounds has seen all. Who ever has stood before the cyclopean structures of one
continent can have a pretty accurate idea of those of the other. Only be it
said—we know still less of the age of the antiquities of America than even of
those in the Valley of the Nile, of which we know next to nothing. But their
symbolism—apart from their outward form—is evidently the same as in Egypt, India
and elsewhere. As before the great pyramid of Cheops in Cairo, so before the
great mound, 100 feet high, on the plain of Cahokia—near St. Louis
(Missouri)—which measures 700 feet long by 800 feet broad at the base, and
covers upwards of eight acres of ground, having 20,000,000 cubic feet of
contents, and the mound on the banks of Brush Creek, Ohio, so accurately
described by Squier and Davis, one knows not whether to admire more the
geometrical precision, prescribed by the wonderful and mysterious builders in
the form of their monuments, or the hidden symbolism they evidently sought to
express. The Ohio mound represents a serpent, upwards of 1,000 feet long.
Gracefully coiled in capricious curves, it terminates in a triple coil at the
tail.

The embankment constituting
the effigy is upwards of five feet in height, by thirty feet at the centre of
the body, slightly diminishing towards the tail.*

The neck is stretched out and
its mouth wide open, holding within its jaws an oval figure.

Formed by an embankment four
feet in height, this oval is perfectly regular in outline, its transverse and
conjugate diameters being 160 and eighty feet respectively, say the surveyors.
The whole represents the universal cosmological idea of the serpent and the egg.
This is easy to surmise. But how came this great symbol of the Hermetic wisdom
of old Egypt to find itself represented in North America? How is it that the
sacred buildings found in Ohio and elsewhere, these squares, circles, octagons,
and other geometrical figures, in which one recognizes so easily the prevailing
idea of the Pythagorean sacred numerals, seem copied from The Book of Numbers?
Apart from the complete silence as to their origin, even among the Indian
tribes, who have otherwise preserved their own traditions in every case, the
antiquity of these ruins is proved by the existence of the largest and most
ancient forests growing on the buried cities. The prudent archæologists of America have
generously assigned them 2,000 years. But by whom built, and whether their—————

* Smithsonian contributions
to
Knowledge, vol. i.

314————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

authors migrated, or
disappeared beneath victorious armies, or were swept out of existence by some
direful epidemic, or a universal famine, are questions, “probably beyond the
power of human investigation to answer,” they say. The earliest inhabitants of
Mexico, of whom history has any knowledge—more
hypothetical than proven—are the Toltecs. These are supposed to have come from
the North and believed to have entered Anahuac in the seventh century A.D. They
are also credited with having constructed in Central America, where they spread
in the eleventh century, some of the great cities whose ruins still exist. In
this case it is they who must also have carved the hieroglyphics that cover
some of the relics. How is it, then, that the pictorial system of writing of
Mexico, which was used by the conquered people and learned by the conquerors and
their missionaries, does not Yet furnish the keys to the hieroglyphics of Palenque and Copan, not to mention those of Peru? And these civilized Toltecs
themselves, who were they, and whence did they come? And who are the Aztecs that
succeeded them? Even among the hieroglyphical systems of Mexico, there were some
which the foreign interpreters were precluded. the possibility of studying.
These were the so-called schemes of judicial astrology “given but not explained
in Lord Kingsborough’s published collection,” and set down as purely figurative
and symbolical, “intended only for the use of the priests and diviners and
possessed of an esoteric significance.” Many of the hieroglyphics on the
monoliths of Palenque and Copan are of the same character. The “priests and
diviners” were all killed off by the Catholic fanatics—the secret died with
them.

Nearly all the mounds in North
America are terraced and ascended by large graded ways, sometimes square, often
hexagonal, octagonal or truncated, but in all respects similar to the teocallis
of Mexico, and to the topes of India. As the latter are attributed throughout this
country to the work of the five Pândus of the Lunar Race, so the cyclopean
monuments and monoliths on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in the republic of
Bolivia, are ascribed to giants, the five exiled brothers ‘‘from beyond the
mounts.’’ They worshipped the moon as their progenitor and lived before the time of
the “Sons and Virgins of the Sun.” Here, the similarity of the Aryan with
the South American tradition is again but too obvious, and the Solar and Lunar
races—the Surya Vansha and the Chandra Vansha—reäppear in America.

This Lake Titicaca, which
occupies the centre of one of the most remarkable terrestrial basins on the
whole globe, is:

315————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

One hundred and sixty miles
long and from fifty to eighty broad, and discharges through the valley of El
Desaguadero, to the south-east into another lake, called. Lake Aullagas, which
is probably kept at a lower level by evaporation or filtration, since it has no
known outlet. The surface of the lake is 12,846 feet above the sea, and it is
the most elevated body of waters of similar size in the world.

As the level of its waters has
very much decreased in the historical period, it is believed on good grounds
that they once surrounded the elevated spot on which are found the remarkable
ruins of Tiahuanaco.

The latter are without any
doubt aboriginal monuments pertaining to an epoch which preceded the Incal
period, much as the Dravidian and other aboriginal peoples preceded the Aryans
in India. Although the traditions of the Incas maintain that the great law-giver
and teacher of the Peruvians, Manco Capac—the Manu of South America—diffused his
knowledge and influence from this centre, yet the statement is unsupported by
facts. If the original seat of the Aymara, or “Inca” race was there, as claimed
by some, how is it that neither the Incas, nor the Aymaras, who dwell on the
shores of the lake to this day, nor yet the ancient Peruvians, had the slightest
knowledge concerning their history? Beyond a vague tradition which tells us of
“giants” having built these immense structures in one night, we do not find the
faintest clue. And we have every reason to doubt whether the Incas are of the Aymara race at all. The Incas claim their descent from Manco Capac, the son of
the Sun, and the Aymaras claim this legislator as their instructor and the
founder of the era of their civilization. Yet neither the Incas of the Spanish
period could prove the one, nor the Aymaras the other. The language of the
latter is quite distinct from the Inichua—the tongue of the Incas; and they
were the only race that refused to give up their language when conquered by the
descendants of the Sun, as Dr. Heath tells us.

The ruins afford every evidence
of the highest antiquity. Some are built on a pyramidal plan, as most of the
American mounds are, and cover several acres; while the monolithic doorways,
pillars and stone idols, so elaborately carved, are “sculptured in a style
wholly different from any other remains of art yet found in America.” D’Orbigny
speaks of the ruins in the most enthusiastic manner. He says:

These monuments consist of a
mound raised nearly 100 feet, surrounded with pillars—of temples from 600 to
1,200 feet in length, opening precisely towards the east, and adorned with
colossal angular columns—of porticoes of a single stone, covered with reliefs of
skilful execution, displaying symbolical representations of the Sun, and the
condor, his messenger—of basaltic statues loaded with bas-reliefs,

316————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

in which the design of the
carved head is half Egyptian—and lastly, of the interior of a palace formed of
enormous blocks of rock, completely hewn, whose dimensions are often twenty-one
feet in length, twelve in breadth, and six in thickness. In the temples and
palaces, the portals are not inclined, as among those of the Incas, but
perpendicular; and their vast dimensions, and the imposing masses of which
they are composed, surpass in beauty and grandeur all that were afterwards
built by the sovereigna of Cuzco.

Like the rest of his
fellow-explorers, M. D’Orbigny believes these ruins to have been the work of a
race far anterior to the Incas.

Two distinct styles of
architecture are found in these relics of Lake Titicaca. Those of the island of
Coati, for instance, bear every feature in common with the ruins of Tiahuanaco ;
so do the vast blocks of stone elaborately sculptured, some of which, according
to the report of the surveyors in 1846, measure

Three feet in width by eighteen
feet in length, and six feet in thickness;

while on some of the islands of
the Lake Titicaca there are monuments of great extent;

But of true Peruvian type,
believed to be the remains of temples destroyed by the Spaniards.

The famous sanctuary, with the
human figure in it, belongs to the former. Its doorway, ten feet high, thirteen
feet broad, with an opening six feet four inches by three feet two inches, is
cut from a single stone.

Its east front has a cornice,
in the centre of which is a human figure of strange form, crowned with rays,
interspersed with serpents with crested heads. On each side of this figure are
three rows of square compartments, filled with human and other figures, of
apparently symbolic design.

Were this temple in India, it
would undoubtedly be attributed to Shiva; but it is at the Antipodes, where
neither the foot of a Shaiva nor one of the Naga tribe has ever penetrated to
the knowledge of man, though the Mexican Indians have their Nargal, or chief
sorcerer and serpent worshipper. The ruins standing on an eminence, which, from
the water-marks around it, seems to have been formerly an island in Lake
Titicaca, and:

The level of the lake now being
135 feet lower, and its shores twelve miles distant, this fact, in conjunction
with others, warrants the belief that these remains antedate any others known in
America.*

Hence, all these relics are
unanimously ascribed to the same

Unknown and mysterious people
who preceded the Peruvians, as the Tulhuatecas or Toltecs did the Aztecs. It
seems to have been the seat of the highest and most—————

* New .American Cyclopædia,
art. “Teotihuacan.”

317————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

ancient civilization of South
America and of a people who have left the most gigantic monuments of their power
and skill.

And these monuments are all
either Dracontias—temples sacred to the Snake—or temples dedicated to the Sun.

Of this same character are the
ruined pyramids of Teotihuacan and the monoliths of Palenque and Copan. The
former are some eight leagues from the city of Mexico on the plain of Otumla,
and are considered among the most ancient in the land. The two principal ones
are dedicated to the Sun and Moon, respectively. They are built of cut stone,
square, with four stories and a level area at the top. The larger, that of the
Sun, is 221 feet high, 680 feet square at the base, and covers an area of eleven
acres, nearly equal to that of the great pyramid of Cheops. And yet, the
pyramid of Cholula, higher than that of Teotihuacan by ten feet according to
Humboldt, and having 1,400 feet square at the base, covers an area of forty-five
acres!

It is interesting to hear what
the earliest writers—time historians who saw them during the first conquest—say
even of some of the most modern of these buildings, of the great temple of
Mexico, among others. It consisted of an immense square area, Surrounded In a wall of stone
and lime, eight feet thick, with battlements, ornamented with many stone figures
in the form of serpents.

says one. Cortez shows that 500
houses might be easily placed within its enclosure. It was paved with polished
stones, so smooth, that ‘‘the horses of the Spaniards could not move over them
without slipping,’’ writes Bernal Diaz. In connection with this, we must
remember that it was not the Spaniards who conquered the Mexicans, but their
horses. As a horse was never seen before by this people in America, until the
Europeans landed it on the coast, the natives, though excessively Brave, were so awestruck at the sight
of horses and the roar of the artillery, that they took the Spaniards to
be of divine origin and sent them human beings as sacrifices. This superstitious
panic is sufficient to account for the fact that a handful of men could so
easily conquer incalculable thousands of warriors.

According to G6mara, the four
walls of the enclosure of the temple corresponded with the cardinal points. In
the centre of this gigantic area arose the great temple, an immense pyramidal
structure of eight stages, faced with stone, 300 feet square at the base and 120
feet in height, truncated, with a level summit, upon which were situated two

318————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

towers, the shrines of the
divinities to whom it was consecrated—Tezcatlipoca and Huitzlipochtli. It was
here that the sacrifices were performed, and theeternal fire maintained. Clavigero
tells us that, besides this great pyramid, there were forty other similar
structures consecrated to various divinities. The one called Tezcacalli,

The House of the Shining
Mirrors, sacred to Tezcatlipoca, the God of Light, the Soul of the World, the
Vivifier, the Spiritual Sun.

The dwellings of priests, who,
according to Zarate, amounted to 8,000, were near by, as well as the seminaries
and the schools. Ponds and fountains, groves and gardens, in which flowers and
sweet smelling herbs were cultivated for use in certain sacred rites and the
decoration of altars, were in abundance; and, so large was the inner yard, that:

Eight thousand or 10,000
persons had sufficient room to dance in it upon their solemn festivities,

says Solis. Torquemada
estimates the number of such temples in the Mexican empire at 40,000, but
Clavigero, speaking of the majestic Teocalli (literally, houses of God) of Mexico,
estimates the number higher.

So wonderful are the features
of resemblance between the ancient shrines of the Old and the New World that
Humboldt remains unable to express his surprise. He exclaims:

What striking analogies exist
between the monuments of the old continents and those of the Toltecs who built
these colossal structure, truncated pyramids, divided by layers, like the
temple of Belus at Babylon ! Where did they take the model of these edifices?

The eminent
naturalist might have also enquired whence the Mexicans got all their Christian virtues, being
but poor pagans. The code of the Aztecs, says Prescott:

Evinces a profound respect
for the great principles of morality, and as clear a perception of these principles as is to be found in the most cultivated nations.

Some of these are very curious
inasmuch as they show such a similaritv to some of the Gospel ethics. “He who
looks too curiously on a woman, commits adultery with his eyes,’’ says one of
them. ‘‘ Keep peace with all; hear injuries with humility; God, who sees, will
avenge you,” declares another. Recognizing but one Supreme Power in Nature, they
addressed it as the Deity

By whom see live,
omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts and giveth all gifts, without whom man
is as nothing; invisible, incorporeal, of perfection and purity, under whose
wings we find repose and a sure defence.

319————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

And, in naming their children,
says Lord Kingsborough:

They used a ceremony strongly
resembling the Christian rite of baptism, the lips and bosom of the infant being
sprinkled with water, and the Lord implored to wash away the sin that was given
to it before the foundation of the world, so that the child might be born anew.
Their laws were perfect; justice, contentment and peace reigned in the kingdom
of these benighted heathens, when the brigands and the
Jesuits of Cortez landed at Tabasco. A century of murders, robbery, and forced
conversion, were sufficient to transform this quiet, inoffensive and wise people
into what they are now. They have fully benefited by dogmatic Christianity. And
he, who ever went to Mexico, knows what that means. The country is full of
bloodthirsty Christian fanatics, thieves, rogues, drunkards, debauchees,
murderers, and the greatest liars the world has ever produced! Peace and glory
to your ashes, 0 Cortez and Torquemada! In this case at least, will you never he
permitted to boast of tile enlighten roar Christianity has poured out on the
poor, and once virtuous heathens!

III.

The ruins of Central America
are no less imposing. Massively built, with walls of a great thickness, they are
usually marked by broad stairways leading to the principal entrance. When
composed of several stories, each successive story is usually smaller than that
below it, giving the structure the appearance of a pyramid of several stages.
The front walls, either made of stone or stuccoed, are covered with
elaborately carved, symbolical figures; and the interior divided into corridors
and dark chambers, with arched ceilings, the roofs supported by overlapping
courses of stones,

Constituting a pointed arch,
corresponding in type with the earliest monuments of the Old World.

Within several chambers at
Palenque, tablets, covered with sculptures and hieroglyphics of fine design
and artistic execution, were discovered by Stephens. In Honduras, at Copan, a
whole city—temples, houses and grand monoliths intricately carved—was
unearthed in an old forest by Catherwood and Stephens. The sculpture and general
style of Copan are unique, and no such style or even anything approaching it
has been found anywhere else, except at Quirigua and in the islands of Lake
Nicaragua. No one can decipher the weird hieroglyphical inscriptions on the
altars and monoliths. With the exception of a few works of uncut stone,

320————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

To Copan we may safely assign
an antiquity higher than to any of the other monuments of Central America with
which we are acquainted,

says the New American Cyclopædia. At the period of the Spanish conquest Copan was already a
forgotten ruin, concerning which only the vaguest traditions existed.

No less extraordinary are the
remains of the different epochs in Peru. The ruins of the temple of the Sun at
Cuzco are yet imposing, notwithstanding that the depredatory hand of the Vandal
Spaniard passed heavily over it. If we may believe the narratives of the conquerors themselves, they found it on their arrival, a kind of fairy-tale castle.
With its enormous circular stone wall completely encompassing the principal
temple, chapels and buildings, it is situated in the very heart of the city, and
even its remains justly provoke the admiration of the traveller.

Aqueducts opened within the
sacred enclosure; and within it were gardens and walks among shrubs and flowers
of gold and silver, made in imitation of the productions of nature. It was
attended by 4,000 priests. The ground for 200 paces around the temple was
considered holy, and no one was allowed to pass within this boundary but with
naked feet.*

Besides this great temple,
there were 300 other inferior temples at Cuzco. Next to the latter in beauty was
the celebrated temple of Pachacamac. Still another great temple of the Sun is
mentioned by Humboldt; and,

At the base of the hill of
Cannar was formerly a famous shrine of the Sun, consisting of the universal
symbol of that luminary, formed by nature upon the face of a great rock.

Roman tells us

That the temples of Peru were
built upon high ground or the top of the hills, and were surrounded by three and
four circular embankments of earth, one within the other.

Other remains seen by
myself—especially mounds—are surrounded by two, three and four circles of
stones. Near the town of Cayambe, on the very spot on which Ulloa saw and
described an ancient Peruvian temple, “perfectly circular in form and open at
the top,” there are several such cromlechs. Quoting from an article in the
Madras Times of 1876, Mr. J. H. Rivett-Carnac gives, in his Arch Notes, the
following information upon some curious mounds in the neighbour hood of
Bangalore: †—————

* La Vega.

†‘‘On Ancient Sculpturing on
Rocks in Kumaon, India, similar to those found on Monoliths and Rocks in
Europe.” By J. H. Rivett-Carnac, Bengal Civil Service, C.I.E., F.S.A., M.R.A.S., F.G.S., etc.

321————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY

Near the village there are at
least one hundred cromlechs plainly to be seen. These cromlechs are surrounded
by circles of stones, some of them with concentric circles three and four
deep. One very remarkable in appearance has four circles of large stones around
it, and is called by the natives “Pandavara Gudi” or the temple of the Pandus.
This is supposed to be the first instance where the natives popularly imagine a
structure of this kind to have been the temple of a bygone, if not of a
mythical, race. Many of these structures have a triple circle, some a double,
and a few single circles of stone round them.

In the thirty-fifth degree of
latitude, the Arizona Indians in North America have their rude altars to this
day, surrounded by precisely such circles, and their sacred spring, discovered
by Major Alfred R. Calhoun, F.G.S., of the United States Army Survey
Commission, is surrounded with the same symbolical wall of stones as is found in
Stonehenge and elsewhere.

By far the most interesting and
full account we have read for a long time of the Peruvian antiquities is that
from the pen of Dr. Heath, of Kansas, already mentioned. Condensing the general
picture of the remains into the limited space of a few pages in a periodical,* he yet manages to present a masterly and vivid picture of the wealth of these
remains. More than one speculator has grown rich in a few days through his
desecrations of the “huacas.” The remains of count less generations of unknown
races who had slept there undisturbed— who knows for how many ages?—are now left
by the sacrilegious treasure-hunter to crumble into dust under the tropical sun.
Dr. Heath’s conclusions, more startling, perchance, than his discoveries, are
worthy of being recorded. We will repeat in brief his descriptions:

In the
Jeguatepegue valley in
Peru in 10° 24' S. latitude, four miles north of the port of Pacasmayo, is the
Jeguatepegue river. Near it, beside the southern shore, is an elevated platform
“one-fourth of a mile square and forty feet high, all of adobes, or sun-burnt
bricks. A wall of fifty feet in width connects it with another,” 150 feet high,
200 feet across the top, and 500 at the base, nearly square. This latter was
built in sections of rooms, ten feet square at the base, six feet at the top
and about eight feet high. All of this same class of mounds—temples to worship
the sun, or fortresses, as they may be—have on the northerly side an incline for
an entrance. Treasure-seekers have cut into this one about half-way, and it is
said 150,000 dollars’ worth of gold and silver ornaments were found.

Here many thousands of men were
buried, and beside the skeletons were found in abundance ornaments of gold,
silver, copper, coral beads, etc.—————

* See Kansas City Review of
Science and Industry, November, 1878

322————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

On the north side of the river
are the extensive ruins of a walled city, two miles wide by six long.
. . follow the
river to the mountains. All along you pass ruin after ruin and huaca after huaca
(burial places).

At Tolon there is another
ruined city. Five miles further up the river

There is an isolated boulder of
granite, four and six feet in its diameters, covered with hieroglyphics;
fourteen miles further, a point of mountain at the junction of two ravines is
covered to a height of more than fifty feet with the same class of
hieroglyphics—birds, fishes, snakes, cats, monkeys, men, sun, moon, and many odd
and now unintelligible forms. The rock on which these are cut is a silicated
sand stone, and many of the lines are an eighth of an inch deep. In one large
stone there are three holes, twenty to thirty inches deep, six inches in
diameter at the orifice and two at the apex
. . .At Anchi, on the Rimac river, upon
the face of a perpendicular wall 200 feet above the river-bed, there are two
hieroglyphics, representing an imperfect B and a perfect D. In a crevice below
them, near the river, were found buried 25,000 dollars’ worth of gold and
silver. When the Incas learned of the murder of their chief, what did they do
with the gold they were bringing for his ransom ? Rumour says they buried it.
. . May
not these markings at Yonan tell something, since they are on the road and near
to the Incal city?

The above was published in
November, 1878; when in October, 1877, in Isis Unveiled (vol. i. p. 595), I gave
a legend which, from circumstances too long to explain, I hold to be perfectly
trustworthy, relating to these same buried treasures for the Inca’s ransom, a
journal more satirical than polite classed it with the tales of Baron Münchausen. The secret was revealed to me by a Peruvian. At Arica, going from
Lima, there stands an enormous rock, which tradition points to as the tomb of
the Incas. As the last rays of the setting Still strike the face of the rock one
can see curious hieroglyphics inscribed upon it. These characters form one of
the land-marks that show how to get at the immense treasures buried in
subterranean corridors. The details are given in Isis, and I will not repeat
them. Strong corroborative evidence is now found in more than one recent
scientific work, and the statement may be less pooh—poohed now than it was
then. Some miles beyond Vonan, on a ridge of a mountain 700 feet above the
river, are the walls of another city. Six and twelve miles further are extensive
walls and terraces seventy-eight miles from the coast “you zig-zag up the
mountain side 7,000 feet, then descend 2,000” to arrive at Coxamolca, the city
where, unto this day, stands the house in which Atahualpa, the unfortunate
Inca, was held prisoner by the treacherous Pizarro. It is the house which the
Inca “promised to fill with gold

323————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

as high as he could reach in
exchange for his liberty” in 1532; he did fill it with 17,500,000 dollars’ worth
of gold, and so kept his promise. But Pizarro, the swineherd of Spain and the
worthy acolyte of the priest Hernando de Lugues, murdered him, notwithstanding
his pledge of honour. Three miles from this town

There is a wall of unknown
make, cemented; the cement is harder than stone itself. . . At Chepen there is a
mountain with a wall twenty feet high, the summit being almost entirely
artificial. Fifty miles south of Pacaomayo, between the seaport of Huanchaco and
Truxillo, are the ruins of Chan-Chan, the capital city of the Chimoa kingdom. .
. . The road from the port to the city crosses these ruins, entering by a
causeway about four feet from the ground, and leading from one great mass of
ruins to another; beneath tins is a tunnel.

Be they forts, castles,
palaces, or burial mounds called “huacas,” all bear the name “huaca.” Hours of
wandering on horseback among these ruins give only a confused idea of them, nor
can any explorers there point out what were palaces and what were not. . . . The
highest enclosures must have cost an immense amount of labour.

To give an idea of the wealth
found in the country by the Spaniards we copy the following, taken from the
records of the municipality in the city of Truxillo by Dr. Heath. It is a copy
of the accounts that are found in the Book of Fifths of the Treasury in the
years 1577 and 1578, of the treasures found in the “Huaca of Toledo” by one man
alone.

Firstly.—In Truxillo, Peru, on
July 22nd, 1577, Don Gracia Gutierrez de Toledo presented himself at the royal
treasury, to give into the royal chest a fifth. He brought a bar of gold 19
carats ley and weighing 2,400 Spanish dollars, of which the fifth being 708
dollars, together with 1½ per cent, to the chief assayer, were deposited in the
royal box.

Secondly.—On December 12th he
presented himself with five bars of gold, 15 and 19 carats ley, weighing 8,918
dollars.

Thirdly.—On January 7th, 1578,
he came with his fifth of large bars and plates of gold, 115 in number, 15 to
20 carats 1ey, weighing 153280 dollars.

Fifthly.—On April 5 he brought
different ornaments of gold, being little belts of gold and patterns of
corn-heads and other things, of 14 carats ley, weighing 6,272 dollars.

Sixthly.—On April 20th he
brought three small bars of gold, 20 carats ley, weighing 4,170 dollars.

Seventhly.—On July 12th he came with forty.seven bars, 14 to 21 carats
ley, weighing 77,312 dollars.

324————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

Eightly.—On the same
day
he came back with another portion of gold and ornaments of corn-heads and
pieces of effigies of animals, weighing 4,704 dollars.

The sum of these eight
bringings amounted to 278,174 gold dollars or Spanish ounces. Multiplied by
sixteen gives 4,450,784 silver dollars. Deducting the royal fifth 985,953.75
dollars—left 3,464,830.25 dollars as Toledo’s portion! Even after this great
haul, effigies of different animals of gold were found from time to time.
Mantles also adorned with square pieces of gold, as well as robes made with
feathers of divers colours, were dug up. There is a tradition that in the huaca
of Toledo there were two treasures, known as the great and little fish. The
smaller only has been found. Between Huacho and Supe, the latter being 120
miles north of Callao, near a point called Atahuangri, there are two enormous
mounds resembling the Campana and San Mignel, of the Huatica valley, soon
to be described. About five miles from Patavilea (south, and near Supe) is a
place called Paramonga,’’ or the fortress. The ruins of a fortress of great
extent are here visible; the walls are of tempered clay, about six feet thick The
principal building stood on an eminence, but the walls were continued to the
foot of it, like regular circumvallations; the ascent winding round the hill
like a labyrinth, having many angles which probably served as outworks to defend the
place. In this neighbourhood much treasure has been excavated, all of which
must have been concealed by the pre-Historic Indians, as we have no evidence
of the Incas ever having occupied this part of Peru after they had subdued it.

Not far from Ancon, on a
circuit of six to eight miles,

On every side you see skulls,
legs, arms and whole skeletons lying about in the sand. . . At Parmayo,
fourteen miles further down north,

and on the sea—shore is another
great burying-ground. Thousands of skeletons lie about, thrown out by the
treasure-seekers. It has more than half a mile of cutting through it. . . . It
extends up the face of the hill from the sea-shore to the height of about 8oo
feet.

. . .Whence come these
hundreds and
thousands of peoples who are buried at Ancon ? Time and time again the
archæologist finds himself face to face with such questions, to winch he can
only shrug his shoulder and say with the natives—’’Quien Sabe?’’—who knows?

Dr. Hutchinson
writes, under
date of October 3oth, 1872, in the South Pacific Times :

I am come to the conclusion
that Chancay is a great city of the dead, or has been an immense ossuary of
Peru; for go where you will, on a mountain top or level plain, or by the
sea-side, you meet at every turn skulls and bones of all description.

In the
Huatica valley, which is an extensive ruin, there are seventeen mounds, called huacas,’’
although, remarks the writer, they present more the form of
fortresses or castles than burying-grounds.” A triple wall surrounded the city.
These walls are often three yards

325————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

in thickness and from fifteen
to twenty feet high. To the east of these is the enormous mound called Huaca of
Pando . . and the great ruins of fortresses, which natives entitle Huaca of the
Bell. La Campana, the Huacas of Pando, consisting of a series of large and
small mounds, and extending over a stretch of ground incalculable without being
measured, form a colossal accumulation. The ‘‘Bell’’ mound is 110 feet high.
Towards Callao there is an oblong plateau (278 yards long and ninety-six
across), having on the top eight gradations of declivity, each from one to two
yards lower than its neighbour, and making a total in length and breadth of
about 278 yards, according to the calculation of J. B. Steere, of Michigan,
Professor of Natural History.

The square plateau first
mentioned, at the base consists of two divisions each measuring a perfect
square forty-seven to forty eight yards; the two joining form the square of
ninety-six yards. Besides this, is another square of forty-seven to forty-eight
yards. On the top, returning again, we find the same symmetry of measurement in
the multiples of twelve, nearly all the ruins in this valley being the same, which is a fact for the curious. Was it by accident or design?

The mound is a truncated
pyramidal form, and is calculated to contain a mass of 14,641,820 cubit feet of
material. . . . The “Fortress” is a huge structure, eighty feet high and 150
yards in measurement. Many large square rooms show their outlines on the top,
but are filled with earth. Who brought this earth here, and with what object was
the filling-up accomplished? The work of obliterating all space in these rooms with loose earth
must have been almost as great as the construction of the building itself. . . .
Two miles south we find another similar structure, more spacious and with a
greater number of apartments. . . It is nearly 170 yards in length, and 168 in
breadth, and ninety-eight feet high. The whole of these ruins• • • were enclosed by high
walls of adobes—large mud bricks— some from one to two yards in thickness,
length and breadth. The “huaca” of the “Bell” contains about 20,220,840 cubic
feet of material, while that of “San Miguel” has 25,650,800. These two
buildings, with their terraces, parapets and bastions, with a large number of
rooms and squares, are now filled up with earth!

Near “Mira Flores” is
Ocheran—the largest mound in the Huatica valley. It has ninety-five feet of
elevation and a width of fifty-five yards on the summit, and a total length of
428 yards, or 1,284 feet,

326————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

another multiple of twelve.
It is enclosed by a double wall, 8 yards in length by 700 across, thus enclosing
117 acres. Between Ocharas and the ocean are from fifteen to twenty masses of
ruins like those already described.

The Inca temple of the Sun,
like the temple of Cholula on the plains of Mexico, is a sort of vast terraced
pyramid of earth. It is from 200 to 300 feet high, and forms a semi-lunar shape
that is beyond half a mile in extent. Its top measures about ten acres square.
Many of the walls are washed over with red paint, and are as fresh and bright as
when centuries ago it was first put on. . . . In the Canete valley, opposite the
Chincha Guano Islands, are extensive ruins, described by Squier. From the hill
called “Hill of Gold,” copper and silver pins were taken like those used by
ladies to pin their shawls; also tweezers the pulling out the hair of the
eyebrows, eyelids and whiskers, as well as silver cups.

Dr. Heath observes:

The coast of
Peru extends from
Tumbey to the river Loa, a distance of 1,233 miles. Scattered over this whole
extent there are thousands of ruins besides those just mentioned, while nearly
every hill and spire of the mountains have upon them or about them some relic
of the past; and in every ravine, from the coast to the central plateau, there
are ruins of walls, cities, fortresses, burial-vaults and miles and miles of
terraces and water-courses. Across the plateau and down the eastern slope of the
Andes to the home of the wild Indian, and into the unknown inpenetrable forest,
still you find them. In the mountains, however, where showers of rain and snow
with the terrific thunder and lightning are nearly constant a numher of
months each year, the ruins are different. Of granite, porphyritic lime and
silicated sandstone, these massive, colossal, cyclopean structures have resisted
the disintegration of time, geological transformations, earthquakes, and the
sacrilegious, destructive hand of the warrior and treasure-seeker. The masonry
composing these walls, temples, houses, towers, fortresses, or sepulchres, is
uncemented, held in place by the inchne of the walls from the perpendicular,
and adaptation of each stone to the Place destined for it, the stones having
from six to many sides, each dressed and smoothed to fit another or others with
such exactness that the blade of a small penknife cannot be inserted in any of
the seams thus formed, whether in the central parts entirely hidden or on the
internal or external surfaces. These stones, selected with no reference to
uniformity in shape or size, vary from one-half cubic foot to 1,500 cubic feet
solid contents, and if, in the many, many millions of stones you could find one
that would fit in time place of another, it would he purely accidental. In
“Triumph Street,” in time city of Cuzco, in a part of the wall of the ancient
house of the Virgins of the Sun, is a very large stone, known as “the stone of
the twelve corners,” since it is joined with those that surround it, by twelve
faces, each having a different angle. Besides these twelve

327————————————————————A LAND OF MYSTERY.

faces it has its internal one,
and no one knows how many it has on its back that is hidden in the masonry. In
the wall in the centre of the Cuzco fortress there are stones thirteen feet
high, fifteen feet long, and eight feet thick, and all have been quarried miles away. Near this
city there is an oblong smooth boulder, eighteen feet in its longer axis and
twelve feet in its lesser. On one side are large niches cut out, in which a man
can stand, and, by swaying his body, can cause the stone to rock. These niches
apparently were made solely for this purpose. One of the most wonderful and
extensive of these works in stone is that called Ollantay-Tambo, a ruin
situated thirty miles north of Cuzco, in a narrow ravine on the bank of the
river Urubamba. It consists of a fortress constructed on the top of a sloping,
craggy eminence. Extending from it to the plain below is a stony stairway. At
the top of the stairway are six large slabs, twelve feet high, five feet wide
and three feet thick, side by side, having between them and on top narrow strips
of stone about six inches wide, frames, as it were, to the slabs, and all being
of dressed stone. At the bottom of the hall, part of which was made by hand, and
at the foot of the stairs, a stone wall ten feet wide and twelve feet high
extends some distance into the plain. In it are many niches all facing the
sooth.

The ruins in the islands in
Lake Titicaca, where local history begins, have often been described.

At Tiahuanaco, a few miles
south of the lake, there are stones in the form of columns, partly dressed,
placed in line at certain distances from each other, and having an elevation
above the ground of from eighteen to twenty feet. In this same line there is a
monolithic doorway, now broken, ten feet high by thirteen wide. The space cut
out for the door is seven feet four inches high by three feet two inches wide.
The whole face of the stone above the door is engraved. Another, similar, but
smaller, lies on tho ground beside it. These stones are of hard porphyry, and
differ geologically from the surrounding rock; hence we infer they must have
been brought from elsewhere.

At “Chavin de Huanta.’’ a town
in the province of Huari, there are some ruins worthy of note. The entrance to
them is by an alley.way, six feet wide and nine feet high, roofed over with
sandstone partly dressed, of more than twelve feet in length. On each side there
are rooms twelve feet wide, roofed over by large pieces of sandstone, one and a
half feet thick and front six to nine feet wide. The walls of the rooms are six
feet thick and have some loopholes in them, probably for ventilation. In the floor
of thus passage there is a very narrow entrance to a subterranean passage that
passes beneath the river to the other side. From this many huacas. stone
drinking vessels, instruments of copper and silver, and a skeleton of an Indian
sitting were taken. The greater part of these ruins were situated over
aqueducts. The bridge to these castles is made of three stones of dressed
granite, twenty-four feet long, two feet wide by one and a half thick. Some of
the granite stones are covered with hieroglyphics.

At Corralones, twenty-fonr
miles front Arequipa, there are hieroglyphics engraved on masses of granite,
which appear as if painted with chalk. There are figures of men, llamas,
circles, parallelograms, letters like an R and an 0, and even remains of a
system of astronomy.

328————————————————————A MODERN PANARION.

At Huaytar, in the province of
Castro Virreina, there is an edifice with the same engravings.

At Nazca, in the province of
Ica, there are some wonderful ruins of aqueducts, four to five feet high and
three feet wide, very straight, double-walled, of unfinished stone, flagged on
top.

At Quelap, not far from
Chochapayas, there have lately been examined some extensive works; a wall of
dressed stone, 560 feet wide, 3,660 long, and 150 feet high. The lower part is
solid. Another wall above this has 600 feet length, 500 width, and the same
elevation of 150 feet. There are